Set sprinklers to water the lawn or garden only - not the street or sidewalk.
Use the microwave to cook small meals. (It uses less power than an oven.)
Purchase "Green Power" for your home's electricity. (Contact your power supplier to see where and if it is available.)
Scrape, rather than rinse, dishes before loading into the dishwasher; wash only full loads.
Cut back on air conditioning and heating use if you can.
Turn off appliances and lights when you leave the room.
HOUSTON -- We can all complain about $4-a-gallon gas, but there’s one more way you could save on it: lose some weight.
You can get more miles to the gallon by getting the junk off your trunk.
Airlines are reducing weight to save on fuel, installing lighter seats and drink carts and even putting less water in the bathrooms, all to save a few pounds that can end-up saving the airlines millions.
The airlines might be onto something that applies not just to flying but to driving: the more it weighs, the more gas it takes. Some of the vehicles were driving today may be considered obese.
Jeff Stracener’s Ford Expedition weighs more than 5,600 pounds, a huge vehicle made even heavier with add-ons such as these running boards.
Other truck owners add stuff like steel grill-guards.
“Some of them can weigh a couple hundred pounds,” Mark Kolon said.
Car dealers love to sell you all the options but at Lone Star Chevy, Kolon said mileage may now matter more.
“More and more people are asking about how to increase their fuel mileage,” he said.
But short of trading in your SUV or pick-up for a compact, what can you do?
Think about removing unnecessary add-ons on the outside and inside, and get the junk out of the trunk. Anything you don’t really need can stay in the garage.
On many bigger vehicles, that can mean completely removing the third row of seats.
“Probably 10 percent of the people use the third-row seat,” Kolon said.
On many models, those extra seats are easy to remove.
“Fifty pounds, take out both seats — you’ve removed 50 pounds of excess weight that you may not be using in your vehicle,” Kolon said.
And each pound counts. According to the federal government, for every 100 pounds, you can get up to 2 percent better gas mileage.
“You’ll be surprised how much gas that will save you over a period of a month,” Rice University research scientist Andrew Barron said. He thinks a lot about how to make cars lighter, because he races them as a hobby.
“Weight is key,” he said.
He said it matters most when the engine has to move all that weight from standing start.
“Removing weight will have the most benefit for people in stop-and-go traffic,” Barron said.
Someone who drives 20,000 miles a year in a big SUV could save $360-a-year on gas just by losing a few hundred pounds worth of extra seats and grill guards.
KHOU-TV told van owner Robin Decie about the potential savings.
“If we had to, I didn’t even think about taking the seats out,” she said.
Scott Chambers drives Toyota’s biggest pickup.
“I don’t think America thought about gas till about $3.50 a gallon,” Chambers said.
But it may pay to start thinking how to get the most out of every gallon by weighing your options.
One more tip: On your next car, keep in mind that luxury options weigh more. Leather upholstery, glass sun-roofs and motorized seats all add pounds that decrease your gas mileage.
