Going Green, One Mile At A Time

I've been shamed. It happened the other night when Terry Swack, CEO of Sustainable Minds (a green product design information services company), called me. It wasn't her fault, she just called me on my own dumb behavior. See, I'm an advisor to Terry's company and a long time friend to Terry and her husband who are some of the best people on the planet. Here's how being an advisor and being shamed are related.

Terry called the other night, needing to catch up on how things are with my family. After we both covered the important family stuff, Terry asked what kind of vehicle I'm currently driving. Being a green entrepreneur, Terry's naturally curious if I'm still driving that gas sucking Chevy Suburban truck around. I wanted to lie. I wanted to lie to her so bad and tell her we had a Toyota Prius, or a Smart Car or something. I didn't want to tell her I just turned over 140k miles on the "subhuman" (my nickname for the Suburban). But I had to tell her, so, sheepishly I said, "Still have the Suburban. Haven't decided with car to replace it with. It's hard finding something that will handle our two big dogs." There we go, blame it on my two helpless, and blameless, animals. The response I got back was one of those heart stopping, "Mitchell!" responses. I was waiting for a smack on the back of my head to come flying out of the telephone receiver. Ouch, I felt one step lower than an oil rig being drilled in ANWR.

That experience put a change in motion. No, I haven't pushed the Suburban off the cliff yet into the gas guzzlers bone yard hall of fame. Not yet anyway, but I ordered a new vehicle. One that gets 80 MPG. Put that in your carbon footprint calculator and smoke it!

I have a 150cc SUNL scooter headed my way from the west coast, fresh off the boat from China. Ironic that I'm buying a super gas efficient scooter from a country whose oil consumption is rising faster than a typhoid patient's fever.

I did a little local and Internet shopping and you can get a really good moped for about half the price on the Internet as compared to buying one from a motorcycle dealer. I paid $1260, all in, for this little baby. And Mary Ellen (my wife) is stoked about it and wants to ride it around too. It's good for a quick jaunt to the grocery store, a stop by the bank, or dropping by to do some errand. The thing goes 60mph and has on-board storage compartments. If this works out, we could have two of them sitting in the garage tout suite.

While I can't say I've gone full out green quite yet, at least it's a step in the right direction. I'll bet I can claim better fuel savings that most people reading this blog. Plus the dirt bikes in the garage that I don't ride much any more are going up for sale. That's leave more room in the garage for the "subhuman". And maybe it'll spend more time there while I'm zipping around on my scooter instead of driving my lone self around town, sucking down fuel in the SUV.