As much as 20% of a typical New Zealand household’s income may be spent on transport, mostly on car ownership and use, and on average it’s two cars per working household. Obviously, our transport distances are further in the Far North and lack of public transport governs we need a car, but perhaps there are other options instead of two or three cars for the household? Is carpooling a possibility to cut down on your fuel costs?
Back in 2001 the New Zealand Automobile Association calculated the real cost of owning a low-km family-size three-to-four-year old car at over $20 per day. Its calculation assumed you had to borrow the money to buy it, so it included finance costs and 20%/yr depreciation in value as well as tax and insurance. That adds up to $140 a week to own a car, before you put in fuel, or cover the costs of parking, providing a garage, cleaning and any extra gadgets or tools. A much older car that’s fully-paid would have lower ‘cost of ownership’.[1]
You need to add running costs per km to the cost of ownership (the NZ Automobile Association researches these each year for members, see: http://www.aa.co.nz/motoring/owning/running-costs/car/Pages/default.aspxand takes into account the engine oil, filters, replacement tyres, petrol, routine maintenance, parts and workshop repairs. If the average annual distance travelled is 12,000km,the total cost of owning and running a 4 year old car(in the range 1600cc to 2000cc petrol engine), was over $10,000 per year in total. Higher fuel costs are raising this.
For a smaller car (1300cc), the cost was several thousand dollars lower. The figure per km for overhead costs is of course higher if you drive only a small annual distance.
An older costs less to purchase, because it has already depreciated much of its original value, but it usually costs more per km to maintain.
[1]To help you calculate your car runningcosts you can work out the cheapest options by visiting:www.gosmarter.org.nz/journeyest.aspor http://www.fuelsaver.govt.nz- site providing information about fuel consumption of vehicles available on the New Zealand market. How much do you spend on fuel?
Cars are resource-hungry to build, and wasteful again once ‘scrapped’
By the 1990s, 48 million cars were being built each year, world-wide.About 26 tonnes of minerals and waste materials are ‘processed’ to provide the metals and plastics used to make each car of under a tonne in weight. Large amounts of energy and water are also required in vehicle manufacture, so that the energy and resource impact of all stages of manufacture is at least equivalent to the car’s impact once it’s in use.
The typical age of cars when scrapped in NZ is from 14 to 20 years.
Western Europe, USA and Japan, put together, scrap 38 million cars a year.Each scrapped car represents, on average [2]:
three tyres dumped (and one re-treaded)
three litres of sulphuric acid in the battery, plus toxic lead battery plates [3]
three litres of petrol left in the fuel tank, plus engine and gearbox oils, if not drained and recovered
five litres of cooling liquid (containing antifreeze chemicals) ready to pollute groundwater
refrigerant chemicals from air conditioner (in older cars, contained ozone-damaging CFCs)
many un-recyclable mixed plastics including PVC (Note toxic dioxins are released if PVC burned)
steel, copper, chrome and aluminium
laminated glass from car windows (whichis not easy to recycle).
[2]Only in very recent years have cars been designed that are capable of easy disassembly after use, for example because they do not have as many types of plastic (and those plastics they do use are coded). http://www.co-design.co.uk/green.htm
[3]90% of used NZ car batteries get recycled by a firm based in Wellington; that’s 600,000 a year.
Health issues
Obviously, our distances are further in the Far North and lack of public transport governs we need a car, but how often do we drive just down the road? The human body needs exercise. Muscles waste, bones tend to become brittle (as they lose calcium when you are older unless they carry weight), and the circulation and immune systems become sluggish, contributing to slow thinking, poor digestion and vulnerability to common infections.
Heart disease has become a major killer in NZ, a contributor to 41% of deaths. The National Heart Foundation lists major ‘risk behaviour factors’ as: cigarette smoking, raised blood cholesterol, diabetes, obesityand lack of physical activity. (These factors act in addition to inherited pre-disposition to heart disease and the relatively greater risk for males and for older people).
Walking 3km in 45 minutes, or an equivalent cycle ride that raises the pulse rate, three times a week, would qualify as sufficient ‘moderate activity’ to make a difference to heart health (World Health Organisation guidelines).
For more information see websitewww.heartfoundation.org.nzor phone National Heart Foundation on 09 571 9191. For exercise activity ideas see www.pushplay.org.nz and search for the Activator to find out simple ways to exercise.
Air travel
As an annexe to this reading, which has been mostly about cars, here is some information on another guzzler of fossil fuels - aviation kerosene (for which no biofuel alternative has been devised yet)!
A small proportion of the NZ population fly frequently for their work and others make long distance journeys for holidays or to visit overseas relatives (the so called 'love miles'). In total these create 2% of NZ carbon emissions, but it's growing. Globally there are 18,000 commercial aircraft and the number rises by about 1,000 a year. Airports are being expanded everywhere.
One long haul international flight can release as much carbon to the atmosphere, per person, as many months of car commuting, even though the rate of release per km is roughly comparable to travel in a small modern car - because it takes you over so many kms! Also the atmospheric impact of air travel is increased by the vapour release at high altitudes in low temperatures - ice crystal trails form cirrus cloud blankets that trap Earth's heat, especially at night. The overall impact of flying (say IPCC) is about 2.7x the carbon impact of an equivalent motoring distance, or over 5x the impact of the equivalent journey distance by train. From Pacific islands, of course, neither can substitute!
Propellor aircraft, flying at lower altitudes, have lower emissionsper km than jets.
What about cruising on a luxury liner instead?Taking several days or weeks to cover such distances in that style actually uses much more carbon per passenger km, as there are higher levels of staff, living space and of permanent powered & heated facilities. Only the cargo-style boat is really efficient on the long haul trips.
Will the next generation abstain from flying as their transport to the 'Big OE', and go occasionally as cargo boat crew instead?
Radical UK writer George Monbiot comments in Heat - How we can stop the planet burning (2006), after saying he's not convinced of the value of carbon offsetting on air travel (with this editor's explanatory notes added in parenthesis): "In order to deliver a carbon cut of the size I have discussed (90%), everyone will have to limit their emissions, either today, or in the poorer nations, in the future. There is no choice to be made about whether to abstain from flying or help poorer people buy better light bulbs (with carbon credits). We must abstain from flying and help poorer people buy better light bulbs."
