Car driving

See all tips to
GreenYour Car driving

Join a green roadside assistance club

Add
This feature is only available to GreenYour members. Please sign-up.

Choosing a green roadside assistance club allows you to enjoy all the perks (seeking a hotel discount?) and services (stranded with a flat tire?) that traditional auto clubs—including industry standard, the American Automobile Association (AAA)—offer. The difference? A green roadside assistance club caters to the needs of all motorists (not just hybrid car owners) while remaining conscious of the environmental ills of the automobile industry and striving to remedy them through various practices.

Find it! Green auto clubs

There is currently only one eco-friendly auto club in the United States: the Portland, Oregon-based Better World Club, which also offers green car insurance and discounts on eco-friendly rental cars and eco- travel destinations. BWC is also behind the nation's sole bicycle roadside assistance program...perfect for those who make their daily commute on a tricked up fixed-gear.

Choosing a green roadside assistance club helps you go green because…

  • You are signing with a company that's got your back when you have auto-related needs but at the same time recognizes the inherently environmentally damaging nature of car transport. Your dues will help support eco-awareness and advocacy.
  • Aside from roadside assistance, you'll be privy to discounts on green vacations, car rentals, and other eco-friendly bonuses such as carbon offsetting.

The facts: in 1994, the last year the government conducted a national survey, residential vehicles in the US traveled 1.8 billion miles—enough to get to the moon and back more than 3,700 times.[1] To feed our appetite for the freedom of a car, we use more than 100 billion gallons of gasoline each year. If that fuel were stored in a tank the size of a football field, the walls would have to be nearly 50 miles high.[2]

And fuel consumption is just the start. Taking the car for a spin—whether en route to the office, the market, or to Wally World on the annual family cross-country road trip—has a negative environmental impact on the natural ecosystems that surround our roadways. And each time we fire up the engine, we sully the earth; from the soil we walk on to the air we breathe.

The nation's largest auto club and roadside assistance organization, the American Automobile Association (AAA), can claim the membership of around 45 million American motorists that rely on the organization for everything from emergency roadside rescue to free maps to discounts on lodging.[3] What many AAA members don't realize is that the association—in attempts to keep as many cars on the road as possible and foster highway expansion—is battling movements that would help alleviate the damaging impact of the eco-issues mentioned above. For example, the AAA fought bolstering the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Clean Air Act in 1990 and frequently lobbies against federal auto safety laws and public transportation initiatives.

A green roadside assistance club, specifically Better World Club, provides all of the same services as the AAA but takes a unique stance when it comes to politics. The BWC supports environmental causes such as the McCain-Lieberman Stewardship Act to fight global warming, higher fuel economy standards, stronger mass transportation systems, and more stringent car regulation.

External links

Footnotes

  1. Energy Information Administration - Vehicle-Miles Traveled
  2. Energy Information Administration - Household Vehicles Energy Use: Latest Data and Trends
  3. New American Dream - Buying Green: Auto Club Membership