Review - Ford C-MAX hybrid: love, love, love



The Ford C-MAX hybrid is efficient and fun to drive.



A couple of months ago I was given a Ford C-MAX hybrid car to test drive for two weeks. I have never been into cars but the idea of a hybrid vehicle appealed to me so I was excited for the opportunity. Cars still don’t thrill be but my two weeks with the Ford C-MAX sure did.

It was my first experience with a hybrid so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had some assumptions: low fuel consumption, lower CO2 emissions and many have self-charging batteries which enhances efficiency too. You’re going to pay a little more for a hybrid vehicle (in some cases a lot more, depending on the make and model) but you’re going to save money on gas and you’ll pollute less.

But there was more that impressed me about the potential of hybrid vehicles.

Eco-friendly summer entertaining

Summer is the season of plastic and disposable dinnerware. I get the practicality of it. With backyard meals, lugging the glass and china out to the deck can feel like a bit of effort and having kids running around the back yard with a cold drink in a breakable glass can be a bit of a worry.

Then there’s the chance that cutlery will get lost in the grass or fall through the cracks in the deck.  If you’re feeding a crowd it just seems easier to use disposable.

Look in any store for outside dishes and the first thing you’ll find are brightly-coloured cups, plates and bowls made of some un-numbered plastic. Disposable dinnerware is often plastic or Styrofoam.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Americans throw out about 113 billion disposable cups, 29 billion disposable plates and 39 billion disposable utensils each year. That’s a lot of landfill, not to mentions the environmental impact of what goes into making them in the first place.

Summer simplicity doesn’t have to mean disposable. Nor are the only options for eating outside plastic. There are lots of great options for picnic and back-deck dishes that are reusable, non-toxic or at the very least, compostable.

Ten tips to keep your compost bin healthy all summer

We’re on a mission to make our compost bin less smelly this summer and we’d like to prevent another crop of bugs from hatching too. These things don’t make the compost cart unusable but they do make it a little unpleasant during the summer.  

If you’re not composting yet consider this: composting can divert up to 40% of your household waste from the landfill. That means fewer bags sent to the curb every two weeks and it means that all of that food waste can go back into the earth in a productive way. Sure, food will eventually decompose in the landfill but it takes a good long time and it’s unproductive. It’s much better to turn compostables into compost, the ultimate form of recycling.