By Josh Goldman
Some of the cleanest cars you can buy today are powered by electricity, though the emissions of an electric vehicle (EV) varies depending on where it is plugged in. Even though parts of the U.S. still partially rely on coal fired power, the average EV sold in the U.S. produces the emissions equivalent of a gas vehicle that gets 73 MPG, and more than 70 percent of Americans live in an area where driving an EV results in fewer emissions than a 50 MPG gas-powered vehicle. Check out how electric vehicles (EVs) fare in your neck of the woods with this interactive tool that will calculate an EV's emissions via zip code.
Looking for the most fuel-efficient SUV or pickup truck? Read on as I'll detail the most fuel efficient vehicles in each of these classes below.
1. Toyota Prius Prime (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle) – 133 MPGe running on electricity + 54 MPG running on gas
This isn't necessarily the most exciting vehicle on the planet, but the 2018 Toyota Prius Prime offers serious fuel economy and a modest electric range at a reasonable price (from $27,100 before any federal or state credits or rebates). The 2018 Prime is equipped with both a fuel-sipping 1.8 liter four-cylinder engine and an electric motor that runs off an 8.8 kWh battery pack that can be recharged in just 5 hours from any regular outlet, or around 2 hours from a 220V outlet (the type of outlet used by home appliances like a washer/dryer. For more info on different types of EV charging, head here). But even when out of juice, the Prime will still achieve a city/highway combined 54 mpg when running off gasoline alone. Overall, EPA gave the 2017 Prime an estimated fuel economy rating of 133 MPGe making it one of the most fuel-efficient vehicles that still uses gasoline today.
2. Nissan Leaf (Battery Electric Vehicle) – 112 MPGe
If you're ready to ditch gasoline for good, you may want to check out the 2018 Nissan Leaf. The all-new Leaf not only got a style upgrade, but it also got a 40-kWh battery that provides an EPA-estimated 151 miles of all-electric range and a fuel economy rating of 112 MPGe. This is a big improvement from the original Leaf's 84-mile range, and enough of a range boost that will make the Leaf work for even more people's driving needs. Charging at home or on-the-go should be easy for Leaf owners as well. The Leaf can be fully charged in as little as 40 minutes with DC fast fast charging, or charged in around 8 hours via level 2 (220V) charging. Starting at $29,900, the Tennessee-built Leaf is cheaper than many of its all-electric competitors, though has slightly less range than the Chevy Bolt (238 miles) or Tesla Model 3 (220 miles).
3. Honda Clarity PHEV (Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle) – 110 MPGe running on electricity + 42 MPG running on gas
Like the Prius Prime, the 2018 Honda Clarity Plug-In Hybrid (PHEV) includes both a gasoline engine and an electric motor powered by a 17 kWh battery pack, which is good for an EPA-estimated 48 miles of all-electric range. When the electric range is exhausted, the Clarity PHEV relies on an efficient 1.5 liter 4-cylinder engine that produces a 42 mpg, which is very good for a big sedan. The Clarity PHEV base price is $33,400, but don't forget about the $7,500 federal tax credit, which can knock the sticker price down to $25,900. Overall, the Clarity PHEV offers the best pure electric range of any plug-in hybrid sedan and should be able to compete with other PHEVs like the Toyota Prius Prime, Hyundai Ioniq PHEV and Chevy Volt.
4. Chevy Bolt (Battery Electric Vehicle) – 119 MPGe
The Bolt was MotorTrend's Car of the Year in 2017, will go 0-60 in just 6.5 seconds, and has an estimated all-electric range of 238 miles. The 2018 Bolt EV remains largely the same, and starts at $37,495. Of course, this price can be lowered by qualifying for the $7,500 federal tax credit and any other state EV credits or rebates. Interested in what EV incentives apply in your neck of the woods? Head over here for a handy guide. The Bolt's battery pack can gain 90 miles of charge in just 30 minutes from DC fast charging and a full charge from empty will take about 9 hours via level 2, 220V charging. The Bolt charge time shouldn't be a deal breaker considering the vast majority of EV charging is done at home—and mostly overnight. It's also important to note that EV drivers typically don't need a full charge every time they plug-in. If you drive 50 miles in a day, for example, then you only need to replace that 50 miles of lost range, which can happen in a matter of minutes from a DC fast charger or hours from a level 2 charger.
5. Tesla Model 3 (Battery Electric Vehicle) – 130 MPGe
There's not too much to say about the Model 3 that hasn't already been said. The Model 3 remains one of the most exciting clean vehicles on the market. Just how clean depends on where you plug-in, but UCS analysis has found that for more than 70 percent of Americans, driving the average EV results in fewer emissions than a 50 MPG gasoline vehicle. The Model 3 comes with either 50 kWh or 75 kWh battery pack that gives the sedan a range of 220 miles or 310 miles, respectively, and can be fully charged in around 12 hours from level 2 (220V) charging or up to a 50 percent charge in 20 minutes via Tesla's network of supercharger charging stations. Of course, Tesla has had some trouble meeting the 400,000 Model 3 pre-orders, but they are still taking reservations if you want to get in line and wait an estimated 12-18 months for one of the most hyped electric vehicles of all-time.
6. Hyundai Ioniq PHEV – 119 MPGe running on electricity + 52 MPG running on gas
The Ioniq is Hyundai's first foray into the electric vehicle market and offers a great alternative to the Toyota Prius Prime at a comparable price—the 2018 Ioniq PHEV starts at $25,835 and the Prime starts at $27,100. The Ioniq also marks the first-time American car buyers will be able to choose between a conventional hybrid, a plug-in electric hybrid, or a battery electric version of the same model. Giving consumers a family of clean options in the same vehicle is a clever move by Hyundai, and one that other automakers may seek to duplicate in their efforts to make electric drive more mainstream.
The 2018 plug-in hybrid version of the Ioniq includes an 8.9 kwh rechargeable battery pack that provides more than 25 miles of all-electric range and can be fully charged in two hours and 18 minutes from a Level 2 charger. Given its inoffensive styling and techno-inclusions like Apple CarPlay, Android Auto and wireless smartphone charging, the Ioniq may challenge the Prius for hybrid sedan market share—a welcome sight for clean car enthusiasts everywhere. Also, the gas-only version of the Ioniq gets a best-in-class 58 combined MPG!
7. Ford F-150 Diesel – 30 MPG (estimated)
Truck sales continue to outpace passenger vehicle sales. Ford, for example, sold more than 820,000 F-series trucks in 2016, which is more than double the sales of the Toyota Camry, the top-selling passenger car. So it's critical that manufacturers improve the fuel economy of pick-ups to meet both the consumer demand for more fuel efficient vehicles and the demands of the federal fuel economy standards. So, it's exciting to see the first F-150 with a diesel engine and 10-speed transmission heading to showrooms this spring, because it is expected to be the first full-size pickup to crack the 30 MPG barrier. This MPG doesn't come at the expense of towing power either. The 2018 F-150 is expected to deliver a maximum tow rating of 11,400 pounds, which beats its closest rival, the Ram 1500 Ecodiesel, by over a ton and puts it in the upper echelon of all light duty pickups. In addition to the diesel, Ford recently announced plans for an F-150 hybrid, set to hit the market in 2020.
8. Lexus RX 450h – 30 MPG
Just because you may need an SUV doesn't mean that you necessarily need to sacrifice fuel economy. The 2018 Lexus RX 450h gets a respectable 30 combined MPG and offers a 3 row configuration that can fit 7 or 8 passengers and a decent amount of cargo space. The standard all-wheel drive on this hybrid model is powered by a 308 horsepower V6 motor, and comes with the luxury amenities Lexus is known for. While not exactly a bargain, this model can transport a whole lot of people and stuff while achieving the same fuel economy as the similar sized Land Rover Discovery (22 MPG) or BMW x5 (16 MPG). If this model is out of your price range, you may want to check out the Toyota Highlander I highlighted in this post.
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According to Forbes, the Three R's sustainability catch-phrase, and the recycling cause it bolstered, remain synonymous with the U.S. environmental movement itself. There's only one problem: despite being touted as one of the most important personal actions that individuals can take to help the planet, "recycling" – as currently carried out in the U.S. – doesn't work and doesn't help.
Turns out, there is a vast divide between the misleading, popular notion of recycling as a "solution" to the American overconsumption problem and the darker reality of recycling as a failing business model.
The Myth: Recycling Began as a Plastics' Industry Marketing Tactic
A recycling dumpster in Los Angeles. Citizen of the Planet / Education Images / Universal Images Group / Getty Images
When it was first introduced, recycling likely had altruistic motivations, Forbes reported. However, the system that emerged was never equipped to handle high volumes. Unfortunately, as consumption increased, so too did promotion of recycling as a solution. The system "[gave] manufacturers of disposable items a way to essentially market overconsumption as environmentalism," Forbes reported. Then and now, "American consumers assuage any guilt they might feel about consuming mass quantities of unnecessary, disposable goods by dutifully tossing those items into their recycling bins and hauling them out to the curb each week."
Little has changed since that Forbes article, titled "Can Recycling Be Bad For The Environment?," was published almost a decade ago; increases in recycling have been eclipsed by much higher consumption rates. In fact, consumerism was at an all-time high in January 2020 before the pandemic hit, Trading Economics reported.
But, if the system doesn't work, why does it continue? Turns out, consumers were misled – by the oil and gas industry. News reports from September 2020 revealed how the plastic industry-funded ads in the 1980s that heralded recycling as a panacea to our growing waste problem. These makers of virgin plastics were the biggest proponents and financial sponsors of plastic recycling programs because they created the illusion of a sustainable, closed-cycle while actually promoting the continued use of raw materials for new single-use plastics.
To the masses, these programs justified overconsumption and eased concerns over trash that could be thrown into recycling bins, Forbes reported. Generations of well-meaning Americans since the 1970's and '80's – believing these communications masterminds – have dutifully used-then-recycled plastics and other materials. They trusted that their discards would be reborn as new goods instead of ending up in oceans and landfills.
The plastics industry went even further, lobbying 40 states to put the recycling triangle symbol on all plastic – even if it wasn't recyclable, Houston Public Media reported. This bolstered the public image of plastic as a renewable resource, but the cost was clarity about what actually can be recycled. As recent as 2020, a Greenpeace report found that many U.S. products labeled as recyclable could not actually be processed by most domestic material recovery facilities.
The Reality: Most Recyclables Aren't Being Recycled
An initial pre-sort removes contaminates, items that can't be recycled, at Republic Services in Anaheim, California on Thursday, April 15, 2021. Paul Bersebach / MediaNews Group / Orange County Register / Getty Images
The U.S. relies on single-stream recycling systems, in which recyclables of all sorts are placed into the same bin to be sorted and cleaned at recycling facilities. Well-meaning consumers are often over-inclusive, hoping to divert trash from landfills. Unfortunately, the trash often ends up there anyways – with the additional cost of someone at a recycling plant sorting through it.
The single-stream system is easier on consumers, but results in a mixed stream of materials that is easy to contaminate, hard to sort and more expensive to process. There are a variety of items – including dirty pizza boxes, old clothing, hangers, plastic bags, aerosols, batteries and electronics – that, if added to a residential recycling bin, will contaminate the entire batch of recyclables, a Miami recycling center representative told EcoWatch. At that point, it can be too costly and too dangerous for employees to hand-pick out erroneous items. Because these items cannot be processed in the same way as recyclable materials, their inclusion often means the whole batch will fetch a lower price from buyers or must be thrown away.
"Most people have the attitude that if they just put it in the blue bin, it will get taken away and somebody will figure out what to do with it, but putting something in the blue bin and actually recycling it are two very different things," said David Biderman, CEO and executive director of the Solid Waste Association of North America.
Misunderstandings, misinformation and mislabeling aside, the harsh reality was and remains that most plastic can't and won't be recycled, reported NPR. For example, the EPA reported that plastic generation in 2018 was 35.7 million tons, accounting for 12.2 percent of municipal solid waste (MSW) that year. Of this total, only three million tons were recycled (an 8.7 percent recycling rate). The vast majority – 27 million tons – ended up in landfills, and the rest was combusted. The environmental agency also estimated that less than 10 percent of plastic thrown in bins in the last 40 years has actually been recycled.
The situation is slightly better for other recyclables, though they make up a smaller percentage of MSW. For example, glass products totaled 12.3 million tons in 2018, or 4.2 percent of the annual MSW generation. Almost 25 percent of glass was recycled, 61.6 percent ended up in landfills and 13.4 percent was combusted.
Post-consumer paper and cardboard for 2018 totaled 67.4 million tons, or 23.1 percent of total MSW generation for the year. The material also had the highest recycling rate of any other material in MSW – 68.2 percent. 25.6 percent of paper ended up in landfills and 6.23 percent was combusted.
According to this EPA data, recyclable plastics, glass and paper accounted for 18.5 percent, 5.2 percent and 11.8 percent of MSW landfilled in 2018, respectively. Those three materials alone comprised 35.5 percent of the total landfilled trash in the U.S. for the year; had they been properly collected, processed and purchased, they theoretically could have been diverted and recycled.
The Reason: Recycling Is Bad Business Around the World
Recyclable waste must be sorted, cleaned and processed before it can be sold as a commodity on the open market. Nareeta Martin / Unsplash
Unfortunately, the EPA data also shows that 2018 was not an anomaly but rather another data point showing how the single-stream system in the U.S. has never been economically viable or feasible on a large scale. To further understand why recycling in America is failing, we need to think of recycled goods as commodities – because that's what they are.
According to the recycling center representative, municipalities and counties pay for residential and commercial recyclables to be trucked to local and regional recycling plants for processing. Clean batches are sorted and/or compressed into bales of similar plastics, paper, aluminum or glass. The centers sell the cleaned recyclables on the open market to buyers who will process them into recycled materials like plastic pellets or post-consumer paper; these can be turned into new products.
This entire process – the processing and creation of saleable recycled goods – costs money. As with any good, profitability requires selling for a higher price than it costs to make. Contaminated batches are harder to process into new products and therefore fetch a lower price on the market, if they can be sold at all. Currently, U.S. recyclables are no longer profitable, and no one wants to buy them.
China used to buy the majority of the world's plastics and paper for recycling, The New York Times reported. The U.S. has been the #1 generator of plastic waste in the world for years and used to ship more than half of its total plastic production to China, a November 2020 study found. The research also noted that up to one-fourth of American plastics sent abroad were contaminated or of poor quality, which would make it extremely difficult to recycle anyways.
Starting Jan. 1, 2018, China banned imports of most scrap materials because shipments were too contaminated, The Times reported; the country no longer wanted to be the "world's garbage dump."
As a result, the U.S. and other Western nations who had relied on China to offload their recyclables saw a "mounting crisis" of paper and plastic waste building up in ports and recycling facilities, The Times reported.
The Western nations began sending recyclable waste to other Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, India and Malaysia. These countries often lacked the infrastructure to handle recyclables, so a lot of the waste ended up incinerated or landfilled
In response, in 2019, the United Nations passed an amendment to the Basel Convention hoping to protect the poor and developing countries who'd taken up China's vacated role in the global recycling trade. The amendment ambitiously aimed to clean up the global trade in plastic waste, making it more transparent and better regulated and allowing developing countries to reject contaminated shipments. The U.S. did not ratify the amendment, and new evidence suggests it continues to send illegal and/or contaminated shipments to developing countries.
Domestically, the closing of the Chinese market to U.S. recyclables bankrupted many domestic recycling programs because there was too much supply and no real demand. The smaller Asian countries could not accept nearly as much as China had. Prices of recyclables dropped, and bales of scrap materials were sent to landfills and incinerators when they couldn't be sold, another Times article reported.
This left waste-management companies around the country with no market for recyclabes, The Atlantic reported. They've been forced to go back to cities and municipalities with two choices: pay a lot more to get rid of their recycling or throw it away. The news report noted that most are choosing the latter.
"The economics are challenging," agreed Nilda Mesa, director of the Urban Sustainability and Equity Planning Program at the Earth Institute's Center for Sustainable Urban Development. "If there is not a market for the recycled material, then the numbers do not work for these facilities as well as cities, as they need to sell the materials to recoup their costs of collection and transportation, and even then it's typically only a portion of the costs," Columbia's State of the Planet reported.
Tiffany Duong is an avid ocean advocate. She holds degrees from UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and is an Al Gore Climate Reality Leader and student member of The Explorer's Club.
She spent years as a renewable energy lawyer in L.A. before moving to the Amazon to conduct conservation fieldwork (and revamp her life). She eventually landed in the Florida Keys as a scientific scuba diver and field reporter and writes about the oceans, climate, and the environment from her slice of paradise. Follow her on Twitter/Instagram @lilicedt.
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