1. Buy a low CO2 emitting car

CO2, despite the media prominence, is not the only exhaust pollutant. Ironically, it has been proven that a low-CO2 rated car can often emit greater quantities of poisonous NOx fumes, which is directly injurious.

Some manufacturers offer their customers a chance to offset their motoring carbon footprints. For example, Land Rover offers a tree planting programme but this may not be capable of offsetting the amount of pollution created by a car plant. “Paying for one’s sins” is not the best response.

2. Scrap your old car and buy a new one

As older vehicles do emit “nastier” pollutants than the latest models, it would be logical to have them removed from our roads. Several state-sponsored incentives exist in Europe to encourage this and, when first introduced in Ireland, new car sales increased by nine per cent making it unsurprising that car manufacturers are keen to support similar schemes. However, no finite evidence is given to the new-car buyer concerning the influence that manufacture, scrapping, recycling, and the disposal of the un-recyclable parts will have on the environment.

Conversely, the WEEE directive, aimed at the white-goods industry, encourages manufacturers to make their products last longer. Older white-goods, like older cars, are generally less energy efficient when compared with the latest model, and yet the introduction of this legislation is evidence that continued use is a more environmentally friendly strategy than replacing old with new every few years.

3, Buy a hybrid car

Switching between internal combustion and self-generated electric power has made hybrid vehicles a commercial success, with Toyota recently celebrating its millionth hybrid sale.

Although a CNW report, published last year, grabbed the headlines by claiming the Hummer SUV is more environmentally friendly than Toyota’s Prius, many critics debunked the report as sensationalist editorial. However, it served to illustrate the larger manufacturing footprint required for hybrid cars. It is reported that the official fuel consumption figures are not easily replicated by the everyday motorist and disposing of an old hybrid car can also be considerably more problematic than a conventional vehicle.

4. Never use car washes

Even though clean mirrors, windscreens and lights have essential road-safety benefits, washing your car helps to preserve its paintwork and reduce corrosion, which helps to make the car last longer and has its own longer-term environmental advantage.

Although commercial car washes have a reputation of being wasteful, forecourt sites have to comply with environmental standards before they are issued with an environmental permit.

According to the “Car Wash Campaign Group,” a legally operating car wash will use a quarter of the water used in domestic washing, using a hosepipe. Furthermore, many outlets recycle, including supermarket chain J. Sainsbury’s plc, whose nationwide 132 car wash outlets use 75% reused water and this, allied to environmentally-friendly or bio-degradable chemicals makes automatic car washes a justifiable method of cleaning your car ecologically.

5. Drive slowly

Driving slowly is not a cast-iron guarantee of sound economic reasoning, because a car driving at 50mph can be more fuel efficient than one being driven at a consistent 20mph. What does make a difference is going easy on the accelerator and this is not the quite the same as slowing down.

Like overcoming many practical problems, reducing the environmental impact of the car involves each of us making an intelligent evaluation of the arguments and then making sensible, well-informed and balanced decisions on how our individual consumption of natural resources can alter.