With the high costs of gas prices these days people will go to some ridiculous lengths so save a few cents a liter. One thing that many of them overlook is the how they use their vehicles. I’ve always though it was a little insane to see an enormous line of cars idling outside a gas station to get a $0.02 savings per liter. The truth is that the way we drive, when we drive what we drive and how we drive can have a huge impact on our fuel consumption.

I’ve compiled a list of driving tips and common mistakes that can save both the environment and your wallet:

Speeding up to slow down…..

Sounds kind of dumb eh, well maybe that’s because it is and it happens a lot more then you may realize. I live in Toronto and I see this all the time I’m making my way home from work and I’m about 800ft from a red light and I throw my car in neutral using my momentum to carry me towards the stop light slowing down as I go. The car in the lane beside me is actually still accelerating towards the light and while I’m about 300 ft away I see the other car pull to a stop and wait. As I near the light I begin to slow down more passing the time until I’m between 150 – 20 ft away the light turns green and as my car is still moving between 20-5 kph. I literally sling shot past the parked cars that have to begin from a dead stop. (more…)

A large step forward in creating co-operation between the government and citizens to help combat climate change. A major percentage of energy produced is lost on inefficient consumers homes. This program provides an oppourtunity for citizens to lower thier environmental impact without breaking the bank. The best part about this is that once the intial (subsidized) cost and work is done it keeps on giving providing energy bill reductions all year long.

CANADA- January 21, 2007, the Honourable Gary Lunn, Minister of Natural Resources, announced the $220-million ecoENERGY Retrofit program to be launched on April 1, 2007. ecoENERGY Retrofit offers incentives for energy efficiency improvements in homes as well as in small and medium-sized organizations in the institutional, commercial and industrial sectors.

ecoENERGY Retrofit – Homes is designed to help homeowners and owners of existing low-rise properties make smart energy retrofit decisions that will result in significant energy savings and a cleaner environment. The first step in participating in ecoENERGY Retrofit – Homes is to call for a professional energy assessment provided by an energy advisor licensed by Natural Resources Canada (NRCan). The advisor will perform a pre-retrofit assessment of the home and provide you with your own personalized action checklist of upgrades that will reduce your energy consumption. (more…)

April Lindgren
CanWest News Service

TORONTO - Ontario’s environment minister is calling on Ontarians to voluntarily reduce their plastic bag use by 50 per cent over the next five years even as critics dismiss the provincial goal as an ineffective public-relations ploy.

“The voluntary approach is a ticket for continuing the status quo,” Franz Hartmann, executive director of the Toronto Environmental Alliance said Wednesday following the announcement by Laurel Broten. “The government could have said they either were going to ban plastic bags or they could have said they were going to impose a significant plastic bag fee like they’ve done in Ireland.

“The impression that’s left with me is that they are not all that serious about actually eliminating plastic bags.”

Central to the government plan is a deal struck with the plastics, retail and grocery industries whereby companies have agreed to reduce plastic bag use by 50 per cent or one billion bags over the next five years. Retailers have also committed to “considering” in-store recycling depots for the bags and pilot projects are being set up to determine how to get consumers to convert to reusable bags. (more…)

An energy-efficient office is good for the planet—and your wallet
By Michael Gowan - MacWorld

You don’t have to drive a Prius, have a worm bin out back, or keep a picture of Al Gore under your pillow to be concerned about saving energy and natural resources. I think everyone can agree that saving money is good. It just so happens that reducing the amount of electricity your computer, monitor, printer, and other electronic devices use is both environmentally friendly and economical. It’s also easy when you know how. Here are eight ways to do that and more.

1. Catch your Zs
You might have noticed that if no one taps at its keyboard for ten minutes, your computer puts itself to sleep. All new Macs ship with OS X’s Energy Saver feature turned on, and that’s a good thing. According to Apple, a Mac uses about 77 percent less energy in this low-power mode than when it’s running at full power. (more…)

Environment Minister John Baird defended his government’s climate change plan Friday, which included fending off a public confrontation with Canada’s best known environmentalist.

Baird had just kicked off Toronto’s consumer Green Living Show when he was approached by David Suzuki, who let the minister know what he thought of the government’s plan.

“It’s a disappointment, John,” Suzuki said as he beat a path to the minister.

“You know what you promised was a long way from what you delivered.”

Baird countered that “this is more action than any government in Canadian history has ever taken.”

But Suzuki was not impressed, saying that it’s not enough.

“He promised all kinds of great things and it’s been a big disappointment to see what it is. It’s all smoke and mirrors and what he’s going to do is allow industry to continue to increase their emissions.” (more…)

MURRAY CAMPBELL -globeandmail.com

Ontario will ban the sale of inefficient incandescent light bulbs by 2012 as part of a large-scale effort to conserve energy and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

It will be the first province in Canada — and one of the first jurisdictions in the world — to outlaw the traditional bulb. Energy Minister Dwight Duncan said yesterday that replacing all 87 million incandescent bulbs in Ontario households with more efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs would save six million megawatt hours annually, which is enough to power 600,000 houses.

Such a reduction should allow the province to scale back the number of new gas-fired electricity-generation plants needed. Provincial officials said the switch to CFL bulbs — which use about one-quarter of the electricity of standard incandescent bulbs — would have the same impact on greenhouse-gas emissions as taking 250,000 cars off the road. (more…)