Green up Your Car Maintenance

According to Larry Moore, owner of Larry’s AutoWorks, a Diamond Certified company, changing your car’s oil too often isn’t good for the environment. If you want to help reduce pollution, Mr. Moore suggests changing your oil less frequently and requesting re-refined oil the next time you have your car serviced. “Re-refined oil is higher quality today than it was originally—even Mercedes uses it,” he says. “It’s made without pulling oil out of the ground, and it costs 85 percent less to re-refine oil than it does to make new oil, so that’s a huge savings you can make in your carbon footprint.”

Mr. Moore says brake pads are also getting Greener. Primarily, manufacturers will have to reduce the copper content in all brake pads by 2014. In fact, copper-free brake pads are already available and don’t cost any more than regular pads. More shops will start carrying them if consumers start requesting them.