We bought a diesel Citroen Picasso in 2002 to deal with our growing family, and because of the options open to us at the time, we thought that a diesel car would be a better environmental choice.  Diesel cars use less fuel than petrol cars and so emit fewer CO2 emissions.  Also, diesel cars can use a bio-diesel blend with no adjustments to the engine, or pure bio-diesel with some small adjustments.  On the flip-side, petrol cars give off less toxic emissions.

There are unfortunately still no garages supplying bio-diesel in Surrey, but we live in hope.

Until we get to the point where we are running our car on bio-diesel, we try to minimise our car use for short journeys (walking to school, cycling more) and we’ve also switched from AA roadside rescue to ETA, where for the same price as our AA membership we now also offsetting 8,000 miles worth of CO2 per year.  We received our climatecare certificate in the post recently.

When our car insurance comes up for renewal early next year, we intend to re-insure with CIS eco-insurance who offset 20% of your vehicles emissions annually, and have a network of eco-friendly repairers who recycle materials like used oil and bumpers.