Green Earth Technologies uses a blend of natural plant-based products to create a line of car care products that are biodegradable and non-toxic. The idea is fabulous - no more sending toxic chemicals down the storm drain every time I wash my car. But as with other natural alternatives to harmful chemicals, G.E.T.'s products have to prove their ability to clean effectively before they can be considered a viable solution. I was curious to know how they meausured up, so I recently tried out Green Earth Technologies' 5-Pack Car Care Kit, available on Amazon.com for around $13.

The kit comes with 4-oz. sized bottles so you can test out their G-Wash Heavy-Duty Hydrophobic Car Wash, G-Glass Organic Glass Cleaner, G-Wheel Brake Dust Removing Wheel Cleaner, G-Tire Ultimate Tire Shine and G-Wheel Brake Dust Shield. It also includes a Green Earth Technologies license plate, which seemed a bit wasteful since you aren’t going to put it on your car.

Four ounces of Hydrophobic Car Wash is good for four washes since you only need one ounce for a gallon of water. A gallon of water to wash your car is actually not a lot of water compared to what most people use to soap up their car, so hopefully that will encourage people to use less water when using this product. The product worked well to clean my car and didn’t leave spots just like they claim. The best part about using this product was not worrying about the soap as it went down the storm drain. The Organic Glass Kit did leave some streaks on my windows that I only noticed once the sun was shining in the windows. It may have been because I didn’t use enough of it. But unless I wanted something specific for cars, I probably wouldn’t spend the extra for the glass cleaner and instead just use what I already have sitting around in my house, such as simplyneutral’s glass cleaner.

The Brake Dust Remover and Brake Dust Shield left the wheels looking nice and shiny but whether or not it actually repelled brake dust is hard to gauge. I ended up using half of the four-ounce bottles of both the Dust Remover and Shield to be able to cover most of the wheels, so the bottles from this kit will only last you a wash or two. The Ultimate Tire Shine removes dirt and grime from your tires and leaves them shiny. The photos show you a before and after using all three products.


Before


After

The products in this kit did a good job of leaving my car clean and sparkly, but didn’t stand out as any better than products I’ve used in the past. But "as good" is better in this case, because everything I was using was non-toxic and not harmful to the environment. This is especially crucial when washing cars since most of the time all those chemicals are being washed straight into the storm drain which goes right into the ocean. All of Green Earth Technologies' products come in recyclable bottles made from 25-100% post-consumer recycled plastics with recycled paper printed with water-based inks.

You can find a variety of Green Earth Technologies products online at Amazon.com or at retailers including Home Depot, Ace Hardware, Tru Value, and Fred Meyer. For a complete listing of brick-and-mortar locations, visit the company's website.

Google Maps recently rolled out a series of enhancements to its driving directions that make it pretty much the best mapping tool available for figuring out how to get around, and earned themselves a few green points for offering alternate walking routes (all surface streets, and unconcerned with one-ways), traffic monitoring so you can adjust your route to avoid it, and even public transportation routes for some major cities. In the process, however, they stripped out the feature that saved us the most gas, money, and time. Why, Google, why?

Multiple destinations haven't been supported for long in Google Maps, but when they did roll out it was with the option to reorder destinations so that users could determine the most efficient route for getting around. All it took was a click and drag and you could switch the order, see how your total mileage and driving times were altered, and preplan the most streamlined afternoon of errands ever.

It's odd that in an era of record-high fuel prices, the company would choose to add traffic reporting - a great way to increase you fuel efficiency and time savings when planning routes - yet take away the ability to reorder your destinations and find a better overall driving route.

If Google ever wished to address this eliminated feature, the Google Groups thread about it would be a great place for them to chime in. Administrators and even programmers regularly monitor Google Groups, and although a failure to respond to user complaints is often a sign that a fix is months or years in the making, they also frequently wait until the solution is at hand before making any promises. Who knows, maybe they have something even better in the works? They aren't the best mapping service around for nothin'.

Here's a quick rundown of all the great features that remain in Google's driving directions mapping service:



What do you do to save on gas and time spent driving? Share your tips with other Tranquil Parent readers!