Great Green Idea: Green Travel: Bundle Trips for Less Miles in Your Car

Bundle Trips for Less Miles in Your Car

Since cars might be indispensible in your fast-paced lifestyle, try to bundle your trips so that there will be fewer cars on the streets. Too many cars on the streets contribute to global warming. Cars create enormous amounts of pollution and harm habitats, air quality, and water quality. Motor vehicles do their worst polluting right after a cold start. Frequent, short trips or frequent stops and starts also may shorten the normal maintenance cycle of your car to every 3,000 miles instead of every 5,000 to 7,500.

While you can't completely control ownership costs such as fuel, repairs, and insurance rates, one thing you do have power over is planning your trips to reduce mileage and pollution. Following these tips on how to bundle trips will be good for you and for the environment.

Prioritize. Before the day of travel, list all appointment locations in order of occurrence. Make a list of your errands in order of priority. There are only two days on weekends, so not everything that the children want to do may get done on the same weekend. On a Saturday, you might put doing the grocery shopping and picking up the dry cleaning as your primary goals and watching a baseball game as second priority. You may prioritize by grouping your errands geographically, using the most efficient route to save on gas. An example could be church, visiting grandparents, and going to a movie.

Multi-task. Choose a dry cleaner or dentist that is within the mall or close to the church. While you are buying the groceries, your children can drop off clothes for dry cleaning or they may have their dental check-ups.

Need-to-Buy Checklist. To eliminate having to go to the grocery store too often, ask your children to make a list of the things they need and the deadline. Inform your children of your grocery-shopping schedule, so they know when they can expect delivery of their requirements.

Need-to-Go Checklist. Make your schedule known by setting up a family calendar. This is especially useful for a one-car family. Write the occasion, time, and venue. In this way, all family members may coordinate their schedules. For example, if someone needs a haircut, it will be easy schedule it close to the time of your departure so you may drop him off when you leave home and just pick him up on your way back.

Plan. When the trip you have planned takes you past a location where you need to accomplish an errand in the next few days, try to do that errand while you are there. It will save you time, gas, and energy. If you pass a dry cleaner on your way to drop off your children at school, you may want to leave the dirty clothes on your way to the school and pick them up on your way home later with the kids. You should also try scheduling errands in connection with your drive from or to work, even if it means altering your normal route.