Yaris Spanks Hybrids in Environmentally Friendliness in Dust to Dust report

[nsmitchell]

Excerpt from the report.

Second is the issue with the actual production of the batteries for the hybrid cars. It is only slowly being revealed that the nickel batteries that hybrids use are not environmentally friendly. The nickel for the Prius is produced in Sudbury, Ontario. According to Demorro, ” This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.” Toyota produces 1,000 tons annually. The production of the batteries does not end in Canada, the nickel is then sent off to a refinery in Europe and then off to China and finally it ends up in finished form in Japan. This in turn uses more energy to create the batteries since it involves many factories all over the world.

End quote.

Anyone who doesn't want to believe this, well that's your right. If you own a hybrid and it makes you feel a little sad so you lash out at the report. Go right ahead. If you own a hybrid and you feel good, great!

If you want a fuel efficient car, get a hybrid, but don't go around thinking you are saving the earth. That's all. The Yaris is a much more "Earth Friendly" car. That is my point to this thread.

Here is a quote from http://canadianobserver.wordpress.co...e-environment/

If you read the article they said that as it stands sub compacts leaver a smaller environmental footprint and that that would change in the near future as the battery technology and service life of hybrids increased. It was hardly a full on shill article for big industry. Indeed it simply cautioned making too much of Toyota’s claim hyped claims about the prius. I still am of the firm belief that we need to get people out of their cars Hybrids or no and into high quality public transit. Cars simply lack the capacity to deliver the economies scale that are required both in terms of outputs and inputs.

End quote.

If you think this is shill you just aren't paying attention.

[flint_mica_manual]

Originally Posted by nsmitchell

The nickel for the Prius is produced in Sudbury, Ontario. According to Demorro, ” This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.”

Toyota buys nickel on the open market. They don't own or control this plant.
Second, Sudbury damage was almost exclusively caused from 1870-1970, there has been drastic cleanup, re-greening, and environmental improvement since then.

The amount of nickel in a Prius battery is insignificant.

The amount of nickel used for batteries is well under 1% mined, most is used for steel, if you use stainless flatware you could say you are more responsible than a Prius driver.

The astronauts in the Apollo program went to Sudbury *not* "because it was considered the closest thing on earth to the rocky lunar landscape" but because the nickel deposits in the Sudbury area resulted from a meteor impact long ago. The astronauts were studying the closest thing they could find to a meteor impact crater. The story that the pollution desolation in the area in the 1960s and 70s was the basis for the NASA work is an urban myth, or at least inaccurate. So the story here, about pollution from hybrid cars' batteries, related to Sudbury, related to the NASA work, is inaccuracy piled upon inaccuracy. The author is either ignorant about the facts or is intentionally deceptive, but deserves scorn either way. Industrial pollution *is* a serious concern but no good comes from poor journalism.

The article describes Sudbury, Ontario, as "the closest thing on earth to the rocky lunar landscape" and adds "Fumes emerging from the [nickel] factory are so poisonous that they have destroyed vegetation in the surrounding countryside, turning the once-beautiful landscape into the bare, rocky terrain astronauts might expect to find in outer space."

Here are a couple of recent photos of this "rocky lunar landscape":
http://images.fotosearch.com/bigcomp...K29-320758.jpg

http://www.daverado.mvps.org/images/Ramsey-Lake.jpg

40 or so years ago, before the passing of modern pollution laws, there was some truth in the allegations against Inco (although *not* against the Prius, which has only been available for the past few years!); although even back then, logging and forest fires were as much responsible for the damage to the environment as mining was. But since 1972, Inco has reduced its sulphur dioxide emissions by more than 90 per cent (as have the other mining companies in the area); and Inco and Sudburians have between them planted more than 11 million trees on more than 14,000 hectares; for which they have been praised by the Ontario Ministry of Environment; by Pollution Probe, a leading Canadian environmental group; and by the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

Sudbury has also won several conservation awards, including the Canadian Environment Achievement Award (1990), the Chevron Conservation Award (1992), and the Elaine Burke Memorial Award for Community Achievement in Active Living and the Environment (1996-1997). For more about Sudbury, see the Sudbury website at http://www.city.greatersudbury.on.ca..._cgs〈=en.

The Mail on Sunday article also quotes David Martin, energy co-ordinator of Greenpeace Canada as saying: 'The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside." The article omits to mention that David Martin was referring to the situation prior to 1972!!

Following the publication of the Mail on Sunday article and a similarly misleading article by the same reporter the following day, the Mayor of Sudbury wrote the following letter: http://www.daverado.mvps.org/Letters...eplyToMail.pdf, to the Editor of the Mail on Sunday, which the newspaper declined to publish; and Inco wrote a similar letter to the Editor: http://www.daverado.mvps.org/Letters...eplyToMail.pdf , which the newspaper again declined to publish. For a newspaper to not only publish allegations they clearly knew to be false, but then to refuse to publish letters from the Mayor of the town, and from the company, that the allegations concerned, is extraordinary behaviour.

I hope you'll agree that this is dishonest journalism of the worst kind, clearly written simply in order to promote the Mail Groups strongly anti-environmental agenda.

[nsmitchell]

Well how do you explain this!!!

[Yaris Revenge]

Whoa! Flint did his homework! Right on!

NS, WTF?

~YR

[nsmitchell]

I must concede this debate. Seems Sudbury is cleaned up now and on the road to a greener lifestyle. Flint Mica has kicked my ass! Touche'!

Liftbacks are better than sedans though!

[flint_mica_manual]

Originally Posted by nsmitchell

I must concede this debate. Seems Sudbury is cleaned up now and on the road to a greener lifestyle. Flint Mica has kicked my ass! Touche'!

Liftbacks are better than sedans though!

Well, major kudos to some relevant posts over at digg for the block of the post's content.

Nice picture of Apollo 10 there.

Huston, the Yaris has landed.

[static808]

thanks to NS and flint, i think we all learned a little more than we anticipated about hybrids and the environment. awesome read...

--B

[PetersRedYaris]

Originally Posted by Yaris Revenge

Probably because the ones that do have that many miles have tripped the odometer 3 or 4 times. Can you honestly say you see more old Japanese cars on the road than old American cars? Crazy talk.


Very, very possible. But by conceding that people do hang on to American cars longer, doesn't that contradict your point about Japanese cars having higher overall mileage?

~YR

Your right, you got me, I'm lying. When did I say old? I said high miles!

[PetersRedYaris]

Originally Posted by flint_mica_manual

I see quite a few high millage imports around here. But I think your culture comment is valid tho. The reason the "wheels fell off" was due to age not mileage. Old American cars simply don't have that many miles on them, because a generation ago, people didn't commute 60 miles to work like they do today. It took me 5 years to drive 140,000 miles on top of the 91,000 that came with my old geo storm -- that's over 75 miles a day. Nobody, or very few anyway, did that 25 years ago. . .and certainly not in an old C-10 pickup. Most old American cars I've seen have under 100,000 miles. This talk of putting over 300,000 on some american car from the 80's is craziness -- unless it was a diesel owned by a mailman.

Anyone wants to dispute that, then I want a picture of an odometer. I've seen plenty of old American cars, and they all have low miles and eventually end up in demolition derbies.

Exactly!!! Odometers only went up to 99,999 for a reason.

[Yaris Revenge]

Hey Pete.... beatin' a dead horse there. Discussion's already over.

~YR