pointing out the obvious

While contemplating a green car recently, it struck me that I am doing exactly what auto makers want me to do - purchase a new car. I want to support green cars, and show that there is interest in producing more sustainable vehicles, however, I also want to curb the consumerism, which is just as much a problem as non-sustainable products.

A comment left by Aleem Kanji got me thinking more about consumerism and how it affects my life. The comment was a little misleading, but it brought thoughts of consumerism front and centre in this discussion. Somehow, I’ve reached a point in my life where purchasing things gives me this small rush of happiness, and I’m not sure how I got here. Case in point - I purchased an Airport Express last week because I thought I needed it. After opening the box, setting it up and playing with it for a few hours, I haven’t touched it. I need to break the connection between purchasing things and gratification, it’s a vicious circle that isn’t helping my bank account or the values that I’m carving out.

With this in mind, I took a different angle to the green car research - car coops. The idea behind car sharing is simple - there is a pool of cars that the car sharing company has at your disposal any time of day or night. Of course the ’share’ part of this idea means this same set of cars is also available to anyone else subscribing to the service, but ultimately, it means there are less cars sitting in driveways, thus less cars produced, and a smaller overall ecological footprint for all of us.

I struggled with the idea for a little while, trying to determine the difference between an auto share and car rental company. The main differences of an auto share are hourly rates, included insurance, included gas, and local availability. The two auto shares that I’ve seen in Toronto are AutoShare and ZipCar. Both offer very similar cars, which are mostly low impact vehicles, a few hybrids and a few vans, both have decent pricing, and both have cars parked in areas close to my house. There is a great article comparing AutoShare with ZipCar written by Torontoist - if you’re serious about the service, you should give it a read.

I’m still in the ‘thinking’ stage of the game, but I’m thinking this might be a great overall solution. I can always try it out for a few months, see how it works, and comment from there.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 9:55 pm and is filed under technology, questions, sustainability, business, toronto, interesting, community, green.