AMERICAN IDLE

Eastmont E-news

#11	May 2008

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Framerica

American Idle

I need another car.

So I've been checking out dealers and also a lot of websites for info about what kind of vehicle would best fit my needs (as green and as cheap as possible, that's all I really care about).

I know a lot about cars now.

I know for example that the current world record in fuel efficiency is held by a vehicle called PAC-Car with 12,666 MPG.

PAC-car

No typo here: twelve thousand six hundred and sixty six miles per gallon!!! Problem is, this car is so small even Cindy's dog Lucy couldn't fit in it; and it's just an experimental vehicle designed by the Eidgenössiche Technische Hochschule (they use the acronym ETH, we can't really blame them) of Zürich, Switzerland.

By the way, do you know which car has the WORST miles per gallon ratio? I thought for sure that with about 14mpg the Hummer was at the top of the list, but to my surprise there's a car out there that's about 6mpg thirstier than the Hummer. According to fueleconomy.gov this car,

yes it IS a car (a Lamborghini Murcielago) swallows a gallon of gas every 8 miles! That's 4 miles a gallon per person because it's only a 2 seater. I guess that with a price tag at around $325.000, whoever owns one of these has probably never heard of fuel economy, climate change and mpgs, and couldn't care less that it cost him more to drive to the strip club than to pay for the lap dance.

But there are cars with an even worse MPG than the Lamborghini and the Hummer! Yours and mine, when we're idling. Then we actually go into negative MPGs, using energy to go nowhere (wow, that sounds like a great slogan for the current administration!).

This subject of idleness brings me to my next question: we all know that traffic lights turn orange before getting red, but do you know why in some European countries the lights also switch to orange before turning green? It is so drivers have time to turn their engine back on in time to drive away. Yes, in Europe, and probably in some other parts of the world too but I haven't had the chance to check that out, you turn your engine off at red lights. You HAVE to in most cases, it's the law!

But law or not, just imagine the savings for a second: a few million cars, switching off, several times a day, every day! To start an engine uses only an average of 12 seconds worth of gas, so idling longer than that is a waste, pollutes, lowers your MPG and empties your wallet unnecessarily). Guilt ridden as I am every time I jump into my old Taurus Wagon, I've tried it around here, but it is way too stressful to stare at the light with your hand on the ignition and try to guess when the light is going to turn green. I inevitably end up being late by a few seconds and inevitably end up getting furiously honked at by the cars behind me. I say guilt ridden because my Taurus only gives me about 21 MPG. That's when I'm being really, really careful, sticking to no more than 60mph on highways - I get honked at, again - and putting the car in neutral in the downhills. My record for driving in neutral on the 6.2 miles stretch from Leeds to Easthampton is about 4.1 miles. That must be saving a few drops, don't you think? But of course I get honked at, yet again.

I need another car. Tired of all this honking.

Speaking of traffic lights, the trend in Europe and in some parts of this country has been to get rid of traffic lights altogether, and replace them with roundabouts, aka rotaries.

roundabout

The benefits of roundabouts are not just about reducing idleness and thus saving gas and reducing carbon emissions, they also improve traffic flow, reduce the risk of accidents and eliminate the need to install and run expensive electrical equipment. They also act as traffic moderators. Just check these 2 sites if you are not convinced:

http://www.roundabouts.us/re_whatisaroundabout.htm and http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/roundabouts/benefits.htm

We have a rotary here in Easthampton, but it doesn't really work very well, because it's more a triangleabout than a roundabout, and no car coming from the South on Main Street ever lets you go around the corner by the fountain, even though there is "yield to rotary traffic" sign.

Or I should say "there was", because it seems to have recently disappeared. It must have been tired of being ignored.

But hey, things could be worse. There are places that do without traffic lights or roundabouts. Maybe that's something we should try here, it looks like a lot of fun judging by this video, check it out (click on the image):

I know, you're asking again what on earth all this has to do with custom framing. Well, just keep reading!

Idleness is also a state of mind, basically meaning "not moving ahead, not doing something when one should be". We at Eastmont are just as concerned about the future of our planet and it's natural resources as you are. And we can't stay idle. Of course we recycle as much as possible: for example, most of the packing materials that our supplies come in ends up at Boss Brown Art where they use it for their own packaging. Scrap moldings, matboards or foamcore are donated either to Riverside Industries or other institutions. We make miniframes with leftover moldings that we sell very cheap (check our "frame tree" next time you need a small frame). That's a start. A small step.

We are also aware that more and more of our moldings are imported. From Europe, but also from South America and increasingly from the Far-East and China. We have already started to eliminate some of these moldings, specially when the quality is poor (that would be the "made in China" ones), but our walls would be half bare if we got rid of all imported moldings. So we keep the ones you like, the ones we like, the cool ones, the hot ones, and the ones that don't come from too far.

And we look for new, more environmentally friendly ones.

We are therefore happy to introduce our latest line of moldings:

Framerica moldings are made in the USA and are produced from 90% recycled materials.

~ less travels, more trees, less trash, more smiles ~

And, as this wasn't enough of a win-win situation, they're also less expensive than other moldings of similar style and design.

We will be receiving our first samples shortly and invite you to check them out. We will offer

25% off

any Framerica moldings

the fisrt time you try it.

For those of you who still want the real thing, the smell, the grain, the imperfection of real wood, we still carry our large selection of hardwood moldings. But we have made sure that our concerns were also shared by our suppliers, and we were satisfied with what we found out. For example this is what a spokesman from Vermont Hardwood told me: "Our wood comes from a variety of sources. However, hardwoods typically are harvested from forests with diversity of species in multiple stages of growth, so it would be extremely rare for a site to be clear cut. Forests of this type, which are typical of all northern hardwood forests, are generally self-propagating by the removal of mature trees which makes room for younger trees and then saplings to then take over. While there are programs which offer some sort of certification as to the sustainability of the source, we have not found any that will also provide us with the needed consistent quality of material that our clientele demands. We hope that continued consumer demand, conveyed by requests such as yours, will produce the needed critical mass to make certified environmentally sustainable woods products commonplace."

Our promise to you:

Eastmont will always work towards providing you with products that have the least impact on our environment.

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