Earth Blog

In 2003 Ford began the Core Recovery Program a recycling and remanufacturing effort that should not be confused with Lewis & Clark’s “Corps of Discovery.” The Corps probably did some recycling of their own but for them it was a matter of necessity and not dying until they had reached the Pacific Northwest.

Anyway back to Ford: Since its creation the Core Recovery Program has diverted approximately 120 million pounds of damaged vehicle parts from landfills and junkyards.

“Most parts that come back to us through the program still have a lot of life left," said Kim Goering, the manager of Ford's remanufacturing and recycling programs. "That makes a strong business case to do whatever we can to extend the life of these components. Even more important, however, is that Ford strongly believes it's just the right thing to do from an environmental perspective."

Ford says more than 85 percent of each of their vehicles today is recyclable.

Yesterday BikeGuard, a free online bike registry managed by myassetag.com, released a series of infographics with bicycling commuting statistics for each state. The data was pulled from the United States Department of Commerce's American Community Survey conducted in 2010.

One of the startling statistics was the percentage of men versus women who bike to work: “74 percent of bike commuters nationally are male, in contrast to a tiny 26 percent who are female.”

Rivka Fogel, creator of BikeGuard said in a press release, "We're really surprised to see some of these findings. We've been hearing about the relatively few women biking to work, but seeing it reflected in hard numbers is a different thing entirely. Then again, based in New York as we are, it's always interesting to see a state like Idaho being so progressive, with numbers that point to an even ratio for cycle commuting across the genders."

The car is still king in California just not king of polluters.

According to a new NOAA led-study, California residents in the Los Angeles Basin now burn three times as much gasoline and diesel fuel today than they were in the 60’s.

However, despite that fact, some vehicle-related air pollutants have decreased by about 98 percent.
The decrease can be explained too: “The reason is simple: Cars are getting cleaner,” said Carsten Warneke, Ph.D., a NOAA-funded scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Children’s book author and gardener Crescent Dragonwagon (born Ellen Zolotow) recently published an extensive and handy cookbook all about beans titled Bean By Bean. The Boston Globe reviewed it and called it “a godsend for both the health-conscious and the frugal-minded.”  But there is one recipe you won’t find in her book and it’s the instructions for making tires for cars.

Zipcar, named a Top Five Company on the Global Cleantech 100 in 2010 and not to be confused with the another car sharing program we’ve talked about here before: car2go, announced the winners of their recent and first ever Ultimate Ziptrip Contest.

The contest, like so many are these days, was social media driven and required Facebook users who are also Zipcar fans to explain in 750 characters or less what they would do on an all-expenses paid trip to a Zipcar served city in North America. There are 16 cities to choose from, including some traditionally huge tourist draws: Washington D.C., Los Angeles,  Atlanta, and Toronto, Canada.

Ford Motor Company sure does love their EcoBoost^™ technology. Have you recently seen a Ford commercial that hasn’t mentioned the EcoBoost^™? If that guy they use as a spokesperson, with the hat and non-confrontational manner, appears you know he is certainly going to mention it. At least that set of Ford commercials are more tolerable than the “Drive One” surprise press conferences set which could lead a viewer to wonder: Is there a Ford driver out there too busy to participate in a fake press conference and has pushed the cameras away?

But back to the EcoBoost^™ and why does a mall shopper in one of the commercials love the sound of it even if she doesn’t know what it is.