Before you say, “What’s the big deal?” consider this:

Most Americans, including me, actually consume around four HUNDRED liters of water a day. We don’t think twice when we leave the tap running when we brush our teeth, or take a 20 minute shower, or flush the toilet six or seven times a day. Need to do the laundry? Just throw in a load. Want to water your flowers? Turn on the hose. And never mind the leaky faucet. Save water? What’s that?

Why do we use water in such a willy-nilly way?

Because we can. It’s a simple as that. At least for those of us living in developed countries (U.S., Canada, Europe, I’m talking to you), we have unlimited access to clean water, and at a pretty cheap price. Even in parts of the U.S. where water is scarce, like Los Angeles, San Diego, and Phoenix, water still flows out of the tap. And it’s clean and safe to drink.

Globally, that’s far from the case. Almost a billion people worldwide live on the little bit of water that would fill four large soda bottles, nothing more. That means they go for days without bathing. They wash their clothes in rivers or streams because they can’t “spend” water doing laundry. Flush a toilet? What toilet?

I’ve always been an advocate for using water wisely. After all, it’s a natural resource that we can’t afford to waste or pollute. But the notion that water is truly scarce for hundreds of millions of people was brought home to me this week when I attended the Further with Ford Trends Conference, sponsored by the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan.

Ford Trends is an annual event the company organizes to shed light on issues that address the intersection between transportation and the automobile industry and consumers, the environment, and design.

Now, truth be told, I’m not one of these folks who lives for the newest, coolest car design. But I do worry about the impact that cars and trucks have on the planet. So when I come to this conference, and this is the third year I’ve come, it’s because I want to see what a company like Ford is saying and doing about sustainability.

Full disclosure, Ford pays my way. And that continually surprises me, since I generally encourage people NOT to buy or use a car. Burning gasoline generates carbon dioxide, a major cause of climate change, as well as a variety of the air pollutants that cause smog and give people respiratory disease. The folks at Ford know that I promote car sharing, biking, using mass transit, telecommuting, and whatever else people can do to drive less.

Still, they invite me to their Trends event! And I come – first and foremost to see what one of the world’s largest companies is doing to address the environmental impacts its industry creates. I also come because Ford has access to research and information I don’t have but that could make me a more knowledgeable and effective advocate for environmental protection.

This year, Ford held a session called Sustainability Blues to focus on water that totally fit the bill.

Why Save Water?

It seemed like a surprising choice, but it shouldn’t have. On average, it takes 4,000 liters of water to make just one car. And Ford cars are being made and sold all over the world. Lack of clean water threatens production in many places where the company has plants. If Ford and other businesses can’t get clean water, they won’t be able to make their products, simple as that.

There are many reasons why water is scarce. Climate change is creating more arid zones. Extreme weather events are wiping out water systems. Even without these conditions, the world’s water supply would be under siege. In the last century, the global population has tripled and water usage per individual has doubled. That’s an unsustainable equation no matter how you look at it. Women and children suffer most, particularly in developing countries, where moms and kids could spend as much as four hours a day trying to find water and then transport it back to their villages.

At the Sustainability Blues session, a panel of experts drove home the point over and over again.

Christoph Gorder, the founder of charity:water, calls water “one of life’s most basic needs.” He was a missionary kid who grew up in Africa with no running water or electricity. Today, his non-profit helps provide clean water by helping to dig wells in some of the most water-scarce regions of the world. “One in nine people don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water,” he said. “We can make a difference.”

Rob Frederick is the director of corporate responsibility for Brown-Forman, an alcohol beverage company whose brands include Jack Daniel’s, Finlandia, and Southern Comfort. If you love Kentucky bourbon or a smooth glass of whiskey, watch out! Both depend on clean water, which is increasingly hard to find in a state like Kentucky where mountain top removal related to coal mining is polluting streams and lakes with toxic run-off.

Tod Walton, Ford’s Manager for Environmental Quality, is based in Shanghai, where he said water quality is as big an issue as the overall lack of water. “My kids need to use bottled water to brush their teeth,” he noted, because the “drinking” water coming out of the tap isn’t actually safe to drink. He reported on Ford’s efforts to improve manufacturing processes in order to recycle 100% of the water used in some plants and overall, and reduce total global water consumption by 62 percent worldwide.

But what about that 4 liters of water a day I personally pledged to live on? I have George McGraw of Dig Deep to thank for that. Dig Deep is a non-profit organization that believes clean water is a human right and thus works to make it available in communities around the world – including the U.S. Believe it or not, tens of thousands of Americans have no access to safe water, which is why Dig Deep is particularly focused on helping relieve what they call “water poverty” on U.S. Indian reservations and elsewhere.

The group is also passionate about educating people like me about how important water really is. They started the 4 Liter Challenge both to raise awareness and to raise money. The idea is to get as many people as possible to take the challenge, and to have others support them by making tax-deductible donations to Dig Deep.

The challenge doesn’t actually begin until October, so I have plenty of time to prepare. I hope you’ll join me – the more we all know about water, the better!

The post I Just Agreed to Live on 4 Liters of Water a Day. Join Me! Save Water. appeared first on Big Green Purse.

Your demand for more eco-friendly cars is inspiring Ford Motor Company to manufacture vehicles that get better gas mileage, use more recycled materials, tap alternative (and less polluting) fuels, and maybe even help you save energy when you’re not driving (think: washing your clothes).

I recently spent two days at the Go Further With Ford Trends Conference at Ford’s headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, where I had a chance to see first-hand what the company is doing to reduce its environmental impact. Full disclosure: Ford paid all expenses for the trip, though did not pay me a fee, is not paying for this post, and in fact required no post at all. I saw the visit as an opportunity to see “up close and personal” what the company is doing to make good on its sustainability claims. Here’s what I found out.

Bill Ford (aka William Clay Ford, Jr., the great-grandson of company founder Henry Ford) opened the first morning briefing by calling automobile manufacturing “the ultimate disruptive industry.” That was probably the truest statement I heard over the two days I was in Dearborn. Creating vehicles that allowed people to travel long distances in relative ease changed the nature of our cities and towns, enabled other new industries to develop, even encouraged us to socialize and date in ways we couldn’t (or didn’t) in the horse and buggy era. But those same vehicles also led to a dependence on fossil fuels that has threatened our national security, polluted our air and water, and changed the climate to such a degree that the whole world is being impacted by global warming. For years, Ford has acknowledged these impacts as he’s pushed his company to manufacture cleaner combustion engines, electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, cleaner propulsion systems, and even the use of recycled fibers and soybean-based fabrics.

These  are all steps in the right direction, but much more must be done, as the Ford scion acknowledged, starting with electric vehicles. “We need to get ubiquity of plug-in stations to overcome range anxiety,” he noted. Infrastructure devoted to cleaner, greener transportation options “is the key to changing the future.”

On a side note, Ford declared that “it would be great to have a female CEO” when Alan Mullaly, the company’s current chief executive, steps down. I completely agree!

Speaking of Alan Mullaly, at a dinner the evening before our briefings began, I had a chance to ask him what Ford was doing to teach people to drive more fuel efficiently. Mulally acknowledged that,
while Ford’s vehicles achieve high MPG under ideal driving conditions, drivers in “the real world” often sacrifice fuel efficiency for speed. A feedback feature in many Ford vehicles will now tell you exactly how much fuel you’re using when you drive, making it clear that when you speed up and slow down, tail gate, and drive erratically you’re burning fuel. Ford has also issued a Personalized Fuel Efficiency App Challenge, inviting consumers and mobile app developers to come up with technology to help drivers use less gas. You can enter up until July 24, and maybe take home a portion of the $50,000 in prize money that will be awarded to makers of the winning designs.

At a session called Sculpting the Future, J Mays, Ford’s group vice president of design and the company’s chief creative officer, noted, “The idea that cars should go vroom is an old guys story.” Today, he says, Ford is looking for a car that not just looks snazzy but gets great mileage, too. He pointed to the Fusion as a “great looking car that also gets 47 mpg.” (You can read about my Fusion test drive here.)

All this sounds well and good. But at the end of the day, as I frequently pointed out during the Trends event, Ford still makes cars – polluting vehicles that, even at 47 mpg, take too great a toll on our health, and the health of the planet.

To my surprise, John Viera, Ford’s global director for sustainability and vehicle environmental matters, pretty much agreed. The challenge, he said, is to “do more good, not just less bad.”

For starters, he said, “We need to think about how to make lifestyles more sustainable, not just
vehicles.” Viera referred to partnerships the company has developed with Whirlpool, Georgia Tech and Sunpower to get consumers like you and me thinking about saving energy everywhere we use it, including when we’re doing the laundry or heating and cooling our homes. Viera envisions a world where your cell phone connects to a smart meter in your home to help regulate your thermostat, to your car to suggest fuel-saving driving tips, and to your appliances so you can maximize their performance using the minimum amount of energy. In fact, Ford calls this the “My Energi” lifestyle. You can read an impartial analysis of the program here.

Related articles

Shopping for a New Car? There are Plenty of Gas Sippers to Choose From.

The post People Like You Are Inspiring Ford Motor Co. To Make Greener Cars appeared first on Big Green Purse.

That’s the good news at the North American International Auto Show, currently under way in Detroit and soon to be visiting a city perhaps near you. Almost every car manufacturer seems to have gotten energy-saving religion. Big or small, snazzy or sedate, if you’re buying a new car, you will have lots of gas-sippers to choose from.

I went to the show as a guest of the Ford Motor Company, but I spent as much time looking at everyone else’s cars as I did at Ford’s. Overall, I came away encouraged. If people are going to drive (and they are, an average of 14,000 miles per year), they may as well get as many miles to a gallon of gasoline as they can. I’ve written here, here and here about the impact burning gas has on the environment and human health. The less fuel we use to get where we’re going, the better.

Plus, increasing your miles-per-gallon average can save you a ton of money. In the ten years I’ve owned my Prius, a car that on a bad day averages 37 or 38 mpg and more frequently gets in the mid to high 40s, I calculated recently that I’ve saved over $6,000 on gasoline. Even after replacing the car’s tires and batteries, I came out several thousand dollars ahead.

Here are a few gas-sippers I saw at NAIAS that I particularly liked:

Ford Fusion – In my book, the best vehicles achieve at least 40 mpg on average and are made with some percentage of recycled materials. I test drove the Fusion hybrid when it first entered the market; I updated the story recently with a report on the strides being made to maximize the use recycled materials in the car’s body and replace the plastic stuffing in seat cusions with biodegradable soy material. The 2013 model keeps pushing the limits further, averaging 47 mpg in the city or on the highway. The car’s Auto Start-Stop feature automatically powers down the car when you come to a stop, then gently starts it up again when you press on the gas. Regenerative braking means that every time you tap on the brakes, you’re sending energy back to the battery to recharge it. On the plug-in model, you can travel up to 62 miles on the power of the electric battery alone, more than enough for most commutes. Not for nothing was this car named 2013 Green Car of the Year by Green Car Journal.

Ford C-MAX Hybrids – There are actually three models of the new C-Max to choose from. The standard C-MAX Hybrid, pictured above, is projected to operate electrically up to 62 mph, with the gasoline engine kicking in when extra power is needed. At maximum fuel efficiency, the car could attain an average of 47 mpg in the city or the highway, or over 570 miles per tank. The C-MAX  Energi is a plug-in hybrid, or what Ford calls a “hybrid plus.”  The plug-in capability allows drivers to charge fully in less than three hours using a 240-volt charging station, or overnight using a standard 120-volt oulet. The driver can choose to drive electric only, gasoline only, or a combination of gas and electric. Both the Hybrid and the Energi come with a “Smart Gauge with EcoGuide” (pictured at right) to help drivers maximize fuel efficiency. Third C-MAX, the SE, is also for sale. You can compare features of all three here. Note that prices range from $25,200 for the SE to $32,950 for the Energi, though that doesn’t include the $7,500 federal tax credit available when you purchase a hybrid or any related state tax credits.

 Prius Hatchback -The Prius Hatchback, left, is a roomy hybrid option that is comparably priced to the Fusion or C-MAX. Like the Ford hybrid models it seats five; the hatchback gives it some nice storage space that could accommodate a family vacation, camping trip, or even the dog. Toyota claims the car will get as much as 53 mpg in the city and 46 mpg on the highway, for a combined average fuel efficiency rating of 50 mpg. Toyota also offers a Prius Plug-in with an estimated 95 miles on a charge, plus hybrids in its other popular models, including Camrys, Avalons, the RAV4, and the Highlander SUV.

 Tesla Electric Vehicle – I have to say, I suffered a bit of car envy over the beautiful Tesla S (right), an all electric vehicle that is this year’s MotorTrend Car of the Year. The car can travel anywhere from 160 miles to 300 miles on electricity only, depending on the size of the battery that’s been installed in the car.  I loved the big, clear computer screen sitting right next to the steering wheel on the front dashboard, which would be great for looking at a map. And it seems particularly clean, given that the battery pack is under the floor and there’s absolutely no engine front or back.

At $50k+, the car is waaaayyy out of my price range. But a girl can dream, right?

BOTTOM LINE: Almost any type of vehicle you’d need is now available in a hybrid, plug-in hybrid, or electric option. Have fun the next time you go car shopping!

Related articles

Ford Fusion Named 2013 “Green Car of the Year”

Kids Drive Moms’ Passion to Save Energy, Join Team ENERGY STAR

The post New Car Shopping? There are Plenty of Gas Sippers to Choose From. appeared first on Big Green Purse.