Who doesn’t want to go green: green with their home, their work, their transportation. There are ways that you can go green in all of these areas. In this blog, we’ll be focused on how you can go green with your car.

Recycle

One way to go green with your car is to recycle. Recycling, in the automotive sense of the word, means that you’re careful with how you dispose of fluids and parts that could adversely affect the environment. For instance, what do you do with the oil from your car when you do an oil change? And if you don’t do the oil change yourself, what does the shop, where you bring your car, do with the old oil?

If you change your car’s oil yourself, find an environmentally friendly place to drop off the oil – somewhere that reuses the oil in an environmentally safe manner. If you drop the car off somewhere for an oil change, ask them what they do with the old oil. Make sure they handle it responsibly.

The same holds true with other fluids, such as antifreeze/coolant. It also holds true for old parts that are replaced on your car. If you have any hope that you can go green with your car you’re going to make sure that your tires, battery and other parts don’t wind up in a landfill somewhere. Old tires are often used as material for roadbeds. The lead plates in a car battery are recycled and used for new batteries, as is the plastic body of the battery.

Maintain

Keep your vehicle running properly and it will burn less gasoline and burn it cleaner. Maintaining your car to go green with your car includes having the oil changed on schedule, tuning up the car when scheduled, or when it starts running rough or inefficiently, and ensuring that the tires have the proper air pressure.

Other factors can affect the efficiency of the way your car operates. For instance, you’ll want to make sure the frontend is properly aligned. Replace your car’s filters as scheduled, check the gas cap to ensure it is working properly. Does it tighten properly? Do you smell gasoline coming from the vehicle? One reason that the ‘Check Engine’ light may be on in your dashboard is that the gas cap is bad.

Track Your Car’s Performance

If you’re aware of how your vehicle is operating you’re more likely to recognize when it’s not operating optimally. Notice how it accelerates. Pay attention to how it idles when you’re at a stop. Listen for unusual sounds when it’s running. You can also track your car’s gas mileage

A car’s gas mileage is a good indicator of how it’s running. To track the mileage is fairly easy; simply divide the number of miles you drove from fill-up to fill-up and divide by how much gas you put in the tank during the last fill-up. If you do this on a regular basis, you’ll notice when the mileage drops. That’s a pretty good indicator that something is wrong.