Research help! eco friendly products?

Question

can anyone find anything about the cons of eco-friendly products or hybrid cars

or why they don't save consumers money

Answer 1

I heard on NPR news that the pollution caused by manufacturing one hybrid car causes so much pollution that if they were in mass production that pollution would cancel out anything "green" about them.

The have to go to multiple continents to get the materials for one battery, plus it has so much nickel- which is a pollutant.

Also, fluorescent lightbulbs contain lead; another poison substance- so although they may save energy, when they're disposed of they pollute the environment.

Also- toiletries claiming to be natural.  Most of the time they have tons of nasty chemicals, parabens, copolymer, DEA, etc....

Also- SOY products are (for the most part) another way to make big biz $$... in producing so many soy products, thousands of rainforests are being cut down.

Answer 2

Hybrid cars are very expensive and generally have had a lot of problems. They cost a lot to fix. Ethanol is not economical. A lot of farming areas in South America are now being used to grow crops being used for ethanol. This has caused for more Amazon rainforest to be destroyed.

Answer 3

hybrid cars are really expensive. The high price rate, take about 36 yrs for the  car to pay menaing when the price of car and price saved by less using of gas(oil) are equal to each other. Money is the biggest factor. ALso, products like solar cooker take a long time.

Answer 4

Eco-friendly products don't have to be more expensive but there is usually a trade-off. Recycling isn't profitable so unless local government subsidizes it, most materials won't get recycled unless it's mandated, which is tantamount to theft.

There are a lot of promising ideas. The CAT or compressed air car may be launched in the US by the end of 2009, getting 100 mpg and having a top speed of 95 mph. For a car that seats 6 that's pretty impressive and I'm not sure that it will cost more than other cars.

Solar and wind and other renewable sources take too long to pay back their initial cost right now but that may soon change as we move to solar thermal instead of solar photovoltaic to generate electricity. Currently, Ausra is building a plant in Nevada that they expect will produce electricity for 10cents a kwh which is competitive.

Some of the efforts are misguided, such as the switch to compact fluorescent lightbulbs which contain mercury. Once they're disposed of, and you know many will just go to the landfills, that mercury will leach into the soil and may reach the water table causing serious problems. Why not wait for the LED light industry to mature and bring out house lighting? They consume very little power and aren't hazardous.

The mandating of ethanol is one reason you're paying more for food this year, since so much corn is being turned into fuel. It's idiotic, they'd have to farm the entire North American continent to produce enough corn to make the fuel the US uses, which leaves no land for growing food. It's a greedy and stupid idea which will cause a lot of harm before they repeal it.

Hybrid cars are an interim solution but they're actually not that much more expensive than other cars. According to Kiplinger magazine the difference is sometimes only a thousand dollars or two, more for a Honda hybrid of course. You would be able to save that price difference over the life of the car at current gas prices.