Carefree and Car-free

For many years we’ve tried to figure out how to live our life without owning a car. These considerations were supposed to be another big step towards our goal of becoming an emission free or CO2-neutral home. We proudly managed to stop devouring meat and dairy products* as the most destructive contemporary reason for environmental pollution caused by private consumption. But even fossile fueled cars and heatings are still responsible for quite a chunk of private household emissions.

We truly believe God gave each one of us the responsibility to be good stewards of creation. We always have to think of ways to obey this important command.

So what could we do? We’ve discussed all the pro’s and con’s over and over. We’ve calculated back and forth. But then Volvo came up with the solution: Their car sharing company “Sunfleet” has recently opened a car pool in Angered, not too far from us. Right after we learned about that I signed up.

Yet we didn’t want to rush things or jump to premature conclusions. So we decided to have a test period where we simply “pretend” not owning a car anymore. It meant the use of our old T4 was “forbidden” for three months: We would walk, use public transport or, in case we really needed a car, rent one from the Sun-fleet. That happened in July: When Karen has to work on Sunday mornings we figured there is no early bus. So I got up at 5 to give her a lift. My very first Sunfleet experience is shown in the featured short YouTube-clip above.

And look! What a great thing car sharing is! After three months we were more convinced and than ready to sell our car.

Turned out, there was a very nice car garage owner in Hannover who was looking for just our type of car to replace his old one and we gladly sold it to him for a reasonable price. He happy, we happy, climate (a tiny bit more) happy!

Another step accomplished! Let’s keep moving forward!

* around 95% of our formely consumed dairy products, to be precise.