“Being sensitive about the environment is good business!”, reads the first line of a local article provided by the City of Eugene in their Public Work's Stormwater Connections quarterly publication. I couldn't agree more. The article highlights a collaborative effort by the Northwest Automotive Trades Association and the Lane County Pollution Prevention Coalition (P2C) to establish business practices that reach the highest standards in minimizing their environmental impact. In the first year of the program five auto repair shops went through an inspection by the P2C to become Eco-Biz certified.

The following auto shops in Lane County have taken voluntary, extra steps to be certified as an environmentally-friendly Eco-Biz.

• Autohaus
• Euro Asian Automotive
• Mac's Radiator & Repair Inc.
• Small World Auto Center
• Wayne's Garage

When it comes time to service our car, I will be looking for this certification from the shop that I have do the work. I am also looking forward to other businesses joining this program. This appears to be a great way to support sustainable business practices.

While researching this post I found the Oregon Environmental Council's web site. They provide practical information in a section called Drive Green Save Green focused on helping people make better eco-friendly choices related to their use of a car. Some of those choices will save a car owner money and therefore deserves a place here at Green Capitalism. There are two specific links that I want to highlight at their site. The first, is the one related to driving less. The other is their link to a 2005 ranking of how socially responsible gas stations are in the opinion of the better world handbook.

I still believe that the best eco-friendly decision would be not to have a car. I don't know what the barrier is to making that sound decision, but it exists. My hope is that the research that goes into writing for Green Capitalism prompts me to take a deeper look at my choices and leads to more sustainable decisions.

Yahoo has published their top 100 green cars. Personally, I plan to go car-less in the next month (more about that in later posts), so I'm not really interested in buying another car. However, I find Yahoo's ranking system quite interesting. They apply the concept of "lifecycle assessment ... the scientific method for adding up all of the environmental damages associated with a product".

They include the major pollutants in the rating system (which are produced during manufactoring as well as actually operating the car):

• Greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2)
• Fine particles (particulate matter, PM)
• Nitrogen oxides (NOx)
• Hydrocarbons (HC)
• Carbon monoxide (CO)

You may have this desire to sell your car and go green and buy the one at the top of the list: the Honda Civic Hybrid. But its still worth thinking about the financial implications.

I was curious what this would mean to my retirement if I went and bought this car today. I used yahoo's estimates for the cost of ownership, but removed anything related to financing (to keep it simple). I stuck to just using their costs for fuel, maintenance, insurance, and repairs for five years.

The total cost of ownership for me $14,089, plus the cost of car, at $23,650, totals out to $37,739.

So now the fun part: invest that into the market with an average return of 7% until I retire (37 years for me), and I end up with $461,307 (I used our interest calulator to compute this)!

If you want to play around with the numbers a little more, check out this site - they include the costs to finance, as well as other variables.

I think I'll keep riding my bike to work....