Are Hybrids All Hype?Brendan I. Koerner takes readers' questions about buying a new fuel-efficient car vs. a used gas-guzzler.

(Continued from page 2)

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Recycling Issues: Why is there no incentive in the D.C. metro area to recycle? I know that in Seattle people will go around and randomly sample trash, and if there are recycleables in it they issue a fine. There is no deposit for bottles or cans either. This might make people value what they throw in the trash and think twice about tossing plastic.

Brendan Koerner: Recycling is a local issue in the U.S., which means that towns and cities are responsible for both organization and enforcement. For whatever reason—cost, perhaps?—the District's elders haven't been on top of this. They probably need to be convinced that there's a strong financial incentive, and that will mean higher prices for post-consumer products—something that is actually happening as oil prices rise and metals become more valuable.

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Smug, obsolete hybrid owner here...: I bought my Honda Civic hybrid when they first came out in 2003 ... I've had five very happy years of owning it. Have I felt smug as my Hummer-driving neighbors in Fairfax County have been anguishing about gas prices, as they idle in the drive-thru Starbucks lane in the morning? Yup. But I've also felt smug on my 10-mile counter-traffic commute—I might have given up the "status" job in Washington to work in Northern Virginia, but man oh man, I sure don't miss the 90-minute commutes. Nope, give me 20 minutes door-to-door any day.

And as for the current class of hybrids' obsolescence: I can't even begin to count the number of vain—and yes, smug—people I know who "trade in" their cars every few years for the latest model. By the time my 40 mpg hybrid dies or needs that expensive new battery (have you priced any replacements on, say, Volvos lately?) it will have paid for itself in gas savings, initial tax credit, etc.—mainly because I bought it before hybrids were "cool." Oh, and yes, I am a bit smug about being just a bit more green than my neighbors when it comes to emissions—but not just on account of the hybrid. We also bought a nice, smaller, more-affordable home that doesn't cost hundreds to heat and cool every year, instead of a McMansion to house our Hummer.

Brendan Koerner: Thanks for the personal feedback. You raise an interesting ancillary issue—how will rising gas prices affect our commuting culture? It seems we've been hearing about telecommuting for two decades now, but now may finally be its moment. I'm still amazed by the number of companies that feel compelled to rent expensive office space in urban downtowns, when their employees could be just as effective working from home. One idea: shared offices, where you just call in your team for one day a week of meetings, then let folks work from home the rest of the time. It won't work for every profession, of course, but it will for a lot of 'em (including my own).

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Alberquerque, N.M.: I hope you tackle biofuels in a future article—the entire subject is sooo awash with misinformation, almost as bad as the "hydrogen economy." For instance, how many people realize that modern Western agriculture is dependent on natural gas to make the fertilizer that allows the intensive farming we expect? That is Brazil's secret, by the way—they are just turning natural gas into ethanol using sugar beets as the engine, courtesy of cheap gas from their neighbor (Bolivia, I think). It also is high time everybody understood that hydrogen must be produced—it is not mined. It's cost- and energy-expensive and inefficient to create with water hydrolysis, or relatively cheap but counterproductive to create by cracking fossil fuels.

Brendan Koerner: Yeah, it's topics like these for which my column was created. There are so many inputs that go into manufacturing any kind of energy source, whether it's ethanol or diesel or what-have-you. If you follow the trail all the way back to the source, one often finds that our intuition was all wrong, and that the seemingly "dirty" option is actually cleaner in the long run.

I definitely need to take a closer look at the Brazilian situation. I've heard good things from people I trust, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some smoke-and-mirrors at work here. We all want green technologies to work, so we can be hoodwinked on occasion.

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Rockville, Md.:"Why are people so irritated by this car?" It changed the paradigm—before then, people expected to be feared and/or admired for having the big Suburban or Hummer. What a disappointment. Not even the bigger SUV got any respect.

Brendan Koerner: The bottom line is that, as a car culture, we have a lot of ego bound up in our vehicles. Strange, since a vehicle's core purpose is to get us from Point A to Point B, not serve as a personal statement. But that's just human nature, I reckon.

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Richmond, Va.: Geez, why are people so snarky about Prius drivers? We all make choices and stand behind those choices. Ridiculing people's efforts to make positive change only politicizes something that should be cultural, not political. We all want easy healthy breathing. I have a 10-year-old Honda, get good mileage, drive as little as I can and take personal responsibiliy for my own acts rather than cracking on Hummers. I act to solve problems rather than trying to pull other people down. Stop talking and act.

Brendan Koerner: Amen.

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Recycling Facts: Do you have or know of a good list of recycling facts to hang up in public places like office kitchens and condo mailbox bulletin boards? I'm thinking things like "recycling one plastic bottle saves enough electricity to run a TV for an hour," "recycling junk mail saves this many trees," "recycling cans prevents the digging of strip mines," etc.

Brendan Koerner: There are several such lists, but I'm dubious on them. Such simplistic comparisons are never accurate, given the complexities of recycling (as well as the fact that savings vary according to a huge host of factors). So such lists are too easily criticized, and those critiques can cause people to assume that recycling is entirely pointless.

That said, I do believe in recycling many items, especially metals. Paper is a tougher call, but when I looked at the topic a few weeks back, I concluded that it was generally a net positive. Check out my archives for some more detailed breakdowns on recycling.

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Washington: Regarding the previous statement that "there's a reason the non-Prius hybrids don't sell well—it's harder for other people to tell that you're driving a hybrid," in my opinion this is simply untrue. As a Prius owner, I can tell you that the reason that the Prius outsells other hybrids is that it is a much better car—and it isn't even close.

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