Wasteful driving
Jan. 13th, 2009 10:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sparrWalMart has cheaper groceries than most grocery stores. Grocery stores have cheaper groceries than a corner convenience store. These are "obvious" things that influence shopping decisions for typical Americans on a regular basis. What no one ever considers, much to the detriment of our society, is the cost of gas for everyday trips.
Hypothetically speaking, WalMart is 16 miles from your house while there is a grocery store 4 miles away and a convenience store 1 mile away. Your car gets 32MPG in the city, and gas is $2/gal. A round trip to WalMart costs you $2, $0.50 for the grocery store, and $0.13 for the convenience store (assuming you are too lazy to walk to the convenience store, the subject of another post for another day). Let's say that the grocery store has prices 20% lower than the convenience store, and WalMart has prices 10% lower than the grocery store.
In this scenario, most people still do all of their shopping at WalMart, because it is "cheaper". In reality, the convenience store is cheaper if you spend less than $2 there, and the grocery store is cheaper if you spend less than $15 there. Why, then, do so many people "make a quick trip to WalMart" for $10 worth of groceries a couple of times a week?
When you drive to another state, you budget $XX for gas for the trip. But when you drive a few miles, you never think of the $X cost as part of the trip. The weekly fill-up is, to the typical driver, completely unrelated to the actual driving that they do during the week. You just don't connect that money leaving your wallet with the activities that cost you the money. This same thing applies to almost any sort of casual driving.
You ask someone how far away something is, most people these days will answer in the amount of time it takes to drive there. The fact that people inherently assume that you are driving, as opposed to taking MARTA, or walking or biking, is a serious and fundamental problem that is the subject of another post for another day. What you should force yourself to do is, in your head, replace "one minute per mile" with "five cents per mile". If, every time you heard "the store is only twenty minutes away" you replaced that with "it costs two dollars to get to the store and back", you would find yourself making far more responsible and informed decisions.
Hypothetically speaking, WalMart is 16 miles from your house while there is a grocery store 4 miles away and a convenience store 1 mile away. Your car gets 32MPG in the city, and gas is $2/gal. A round trip to WalMart costs you $2, $0.50 for the grocery store, and $0.13 for the convenience store (assuming you are too lazy to walk to the convenience store, the subject of another post for another day). Let's say that the grocery store has prices 20% lower than the convenience store, and WalMart has prices 10% lower than the grocery store.
In this scenario, most people still do all of their shopping at WalMart, because it is "cheaper". In reality, the convenience store is cheaper if you spend less than $2 there, and the grocery store is cheaper if you spend less than $15 there. Why, then, do so many people "make a quick trip to WalMart" for $10 worth of groceries a couple of times a week?
When you drive to another state, you budget $XX for gas for the trip. But when you drive a few miles, you never think of the $X cost as part of the trip. The weekly fill-up is, to the typical driver, completely unrelated to the actual driving that they do during the week. You just don't connect that money leaving your wallet with the activities that cost you the money. This same thing applies to almost any sort of casual driving.
You ask someone how far away something is, most people these days will answer in the amount of time it takes to drive there. The fact that people inherently assume that you are driving, as opposed to taking MARTA, or walking or biking, is a serious and fundamental problem that is the subject of another post for another day. What you should force yourself to do is, in your head, replace "one minute per mile" with "five cents per mile". If, every time you heard "the store is only twenty minutes away" you replaced that with "it costs two dollars to get to the store and back", you would find yourself making far more responsible and informed decisions.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-14 12:32 pm (UTC)