What are your frugal and sustainable tips and tricks?

[BDutch]

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This is what I found :

If you want to make a comparison with combustion engines, you have to include the CO2 that comes with producing electricity. At the same time, not only is CO2 released when petrol or diesel is burned in an engine block, but the production of these fuels is also anything but CO2 neutral. So this also has to be taken into account. The total emissions when you add these factors together is also called the well-to-wheel emissions (WTW). Research by TNO (see the PDF download at the bottom of this TNO webpage) shows that the WTW emissions of an electric car are three to four times lower than those of a petrol or diesel car.

Variable Tipping Point

The number of kilometers after which this tipping point occurs depends on many variables. TNO calculated that for a mid-size car, this is approximately 39,000 kilometers. Since the average lifespan of a car is around 220,000 kilometers, an electric car ultimately has 35 to 55 percent lower CO2 emissions than a comparable gasoline car.

Incidentally, a battery pack will most likely reach 220,000 km. This is subject to degradation (and therefore a steadily decreasing range), but it certainly won't always be necessary to replace a battery pack halfway through its lifespan, as is often assumed.

(published on https://www.anwb.nl/auto/elektrisch-rijden/elektrische-autos/hoe-duurzaam-zijn-elektrische-autos source research institute in the Netherlands)

I couldn’t find anything about solar energy which is used by many EV car owners.

 

[Sally PB]

We pay $2.20/gallon for propane here, and that's the "bargain buy-in member price." Natural gas is not available out here. Our woodstove keeps our house toasty -- to a point. If it gets down to about 10° F, we let the furnace run. The extremities of the house can get too cold, and then we'd have to worry about pipes in the outside walls freezing.

The furnace also requires electricity to heat the ignition bar (or whatever it's called), which is like heating a burner on the stove on high. Peak rate is 15¢ kwh, off peak is 10¢. On our latest bill, about 52% of the bill is "other charges." The big one is the distribution charge, at 8¢.

 

[gtaus]

Incidentally, a battery pack will most likely reach 220,000 km. This is subject to degradation (and therefore a steadily decreasing range), but it certainly won't always be necessary to replace a battery pack halfway through its lifespan, as is often assumed.

I wonder if we will soon get to the point where we have different tiers of used EV's for different consumers? Maybe someone needs to get that full 300 mile range in their EV. As the battery pack ages and it gets less range, maybe they buy a new EV. I would not mind buying a used EV with 200 mile range because we only drive about 20 miles to work and back each day. Let's say we stop at the grocery store or run a few errands in town before heading home, that really only amount to about 30 miles per day. As long as the rest of the EV is in good working condition, I would be plenty happy getting an EV as a commuter car for daily trips to town and back.

The guy I talked to at the EV show that had his 10-year-old Tesla Model X on display claimed his battery system was showing 85% health. Sounds like he has many more years he can get out of that battery pack.

I was hoping to see cars from BYD, but I guess they are blocked here in the states....

Most of our EV show was Tesla, some Ford pickups and I think a Chevy was there. We are a small town of 12,000 people, so most of the EV show was people showing off their EV's with Tesla being the only company that shows up with representatives each year. We are not a big EV market, I get that, but it would be nice to see more brands. Especially the BYD EV's because I hear they overtook Tesla in worldwide sales in 2024 to become number one.

 

[BDutch]

I wonder if we will soon get to the point where we have different tiers of used EV's for different consumers? Maybe someone needs to get that full 300 mile range in their EV. As the battery pack ages and it gets less range, maybe they buy a new EV. I would not mind buying a used EV with 200 mile range because we only drive about 20 miles to work and back each day. Let's say we stop at the grocery store or run a few errands in town before heading home, that really only amount to about 30 miles per day. As long as the rest of the EV is in good working condition, I would be plenty happy getting an EV as a commuter car for daily trips to town and back.

The guy I talked to at the EV show that had his 10-year-old Tesla Model X on display claimed his battery system was showing 85% health. Sounds like he has many more years he can get out of that battery pack.

I quoted an article.
Our EV still has almost the 100% range after 5 years. We started with approx 450 or 460 km range, and last summer we still have about 440 km to go with a full battery when we do not speed.

 

[gtaus]

I quoted an article.
Our EV still has almost the 100% range after 5 years. We started with approx 450 or 460 km range, and last summer we still have about 440 km to go with a full battery when we do not speed.

Looks like those battery packs are lasting much longer than anticipated. You have almost 100% range after 5 years, the Tesla owner I talked to had 85% battery health after 10 years - sounds like those batteries are holding up much better than expected which probably means that a used EV value will be higher compared to used gas car prices.

I think that's a very good thing. Lots of anti-EV people I know always state that the battery packs don't last long and then they are toxic to dispose of in landfills. Sounds like the batteries are lasting much longer than some people think and if the industry moves to non-toxic sodium batteries, there will be no toxic disposal of batteries at end of life.

Is there any second life to EV batteries? For example, can they be repackaged as giant Solar battery storage systems? Can dead cells be recycled for minerals to build new cells? I'm all for reusing materials if possible, and if it makes sense, to keep toxic materials out of our landfills.

 

[gtaus]

At Home Sustainability Efforts

I have made a conscious effort to see how much stuff I can reuse at home and reduce the amount of "garbage" we send to the landfill. It has taken us a number of years, but I am happy to say that I have not brought one garbage bag to the landfill in almost 3 years! It's not magic.

The bulk of our garbage used to be paper products. However, I shred almost all our household paper and cardboard and use it as chicken coop litter. When I clean out the old chicken coop litter, it gets dumped in the chicken run composting system and turned into black gold compost along with other organics from yard waste. By shredding our paper products, I expect more than half of our garbage bulk was reduced.

Next, we removed all our potential glass, plastic, and metal recyclables. Where I live, we can combine all our recyclables into one container, which is very nice and takes much less room than having separate contains for each type of recyclable. We typical drop off one big bag of recyclables every week at the recycle bin which is on our way to town. Let's estimate another 45% of recyclable goods are removed from the garbage and sent to the recycle bin.

Now, we are down to about 5% of our household garbage. Since I have chickens, almost all our old leftovers and kitchen scraps get tossed into the chicken run. My chickens love to see me heading out to the chicken run with my "chicken bucket" containing good treats for them to eat. I empty the chicken bucket every day, so nothing gets moldy. Some days are better than others, but the bucket gets emptied every day. If I have any food stuff that is harmful to the chickens, I'll toss that into a separate compost bin away from the chickens. In the end, there is no "wet food" type stuff going into our waste can. Maybe down another 3% off our total garbage, leaving 2% to deal with.

We don't have many metal spray cans, but they cannot be recycled. I will put those type of items in a small bag, put them out in the car, and dump them in a trash bin at the service station when I fill up the car. Or, put them in a trash bin outside one of the stores we shop at for goods. I'm talking about a small bag holding maybe only one or two spray cans every 4-5 months. Nobody cares about that. Just don't try to save up garbage in a big trash bag and stuff it into a service station trash bin.

That leaves about 1% of our total household garbage that goes into our kitchen trash container. All that stuff is burnable. About once every 2 weeks I take out that kitchen bag of trash and use it to light a fire in my burn ring where I am burning out a stump. My current stump will take another 2 or 3 burns before I expect that stump will be done. But it's OK. I'm in no big hurry.

In the end, there is nothing left for me to haul out to our landfill. It has been a learning process for us to get to this point. We just found one small step after another to reduce our garbage footprint. It all adds up over time. Creating the habit to recycle, reuse, repurpose, or burn is what took some effort at first. It's seems so much easier to just toss everything into a big trash bag and send it out to the landfill. However, now that we have our personal system down to reduce our garbage footprint, we think it's too much effort to drive across town to dump our garbage bags at the landfill.

30 years ago, we used to send 3 or 4 big bags full of garbage to the landfill every week. Compare that to present, where it has been almost 3 years since I have sent anything to the landfill. That's progress in my books but it only happened in small steps along the way.

I would love to hear what other people are doing to reduce their garbage footprint. Thanks.