We’re not here to talk about all of that junk, but all of that in your car’s trunk.  The advice herein will likely save you money and improve your envirohuman impact.

As is often the case with improving one’s envirohuman impact, the math required is not only addition but multiplication. Travel is another case where multiplying the effect of your actions will likely yield a better indicator of where you could easily trim your negative impact.

With travel, the big multiplier is often the distance traveled. Let’s say you travel an average of 300 miles a week in your car (you commute and use your car for errands). In addition to the normal gear found in your car, you have left your hiking bag in the trunk since last summer. You don’t need that space for anything (typically) and you never know when the mood will strike you to take a hike (you tell yourself).

Seems harmless enough, anyway. Simple calculation will show us that if you tote an extra ten pounds of gear in your car, that’s equal to unnecessarily moving 1.5 tons one mile each week (300 miles X 10 lbs. = 3,000 lbs moved). That’s equal to moving 78 unnecessary tons of gear one mile each year.

And that’s calculating by only having ten extra pounds in the car.  If you have fifty pounds extra (some of us are looking down at our stomachs) with gas prices at the highest ever in the U.S., you would do well to cut out extra weight in your vehicle — folding chairs, baseball bats, the tools and excess wood you left after helping a friend with a project — it all adds up to extra weight that you essentially are paying for your car to move.

And all that junk inside your trunk (your hump.  your hump, your hump, your hump) might be a place to cut corners, too — (Check it out!) it costs money to eat, it costs money to haul “that junk” around, and despite what some will tell you about the sight of having a little too much back there, it is in fact, “unhealthy” to be overweight.  All insensitive joking aside, if you find yourself a little overweight, losing a little by moderate exercise and slowly decreasing your caloric intake to a healthy level (discuss this with your doctor or a nutritionist) could help both your gas mileage and make you a healthier person, less likely to develop heart disease or diabetes.  Food production and transportation in most cases has a significantly negative envirohuman impact as well, so eating less helps in that respect, also.  As if you need one more reason, having healthier eating and exercise habits can also be better for the environment.

And the environment pays, too! Burning through extra gas hurts your pocketbook, but it contributes to global warming and pollutes our environment as well!  So if it totals fifty pounds of unneeded weight average in your car over the course of a year, it’s like moving 390 extra tons one mile every year.  Depending upon the efficiency of your car (and driving habits), that could represent a lot of gas money, but also a whole lot of carbon dioxide and other gases expelled from your tailpipe, into our atmosphere!

Another way to look at it? Think of it as driving one ton an extra 390 miles every year.  So it might be pretty close to you driving an extra week every year, if the extra gear totals 50 pounds.  Whatever your average gas cost for a week of driving would be close to the cost of driving that extra weight around with you every year.  That’s costly for both you and the environment!

Action item: clean out the extra gear in your car. No, don’t remove needed tools, flashlights, and other safety gear you might need if your car breaks down or if you have a flat, but that baseball bat, folding chair, hiking gear, or other stuff you leave in there as a matter of habit should all be asked of it, “do I really need this in my trunk?”  Check not only in your cargo area, but the inside of the vehicle might also have extra unneeded gadgets that you might do well to leave at home.

The best way to improve your envirohuman impact via your vehicle is to leave it at home more.  Consider walking, biking, and using public transportation more, or even giving up your vehicle completely and using a car share program when you feel you “need” a car for a task or errand.

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