How to Use Less Water and Be Eco-Friendly Washing the Car Posted on August 19th, 2009
Alright, so you traded in the gigantic SUV for a Toyota Prius, you got the white one so that you could cut down on the amount of A/C you’d use, and you have great, economical fuel-saver tires and you drive it so that only the green lights show on the dash.
Yet you’re still wasting resources, you hog!
Okay, so most of us don’t fit this San Francisco profile of the modern eco-human (who lives in the dirty, polluted city and works at some multi-national corporation, no doubt). At our house, we have two adults and (gasp!) two cars too. I have a Toyota pickup truck, which is a highly useful machine. It gets crap mileage when compared to some things, but it can go anywhere (important in Wyoming) and carry stuff doing it (also important). There is nothing more useful than a small pickup truck with four wheel drive. Besides, it’s a 1990 and has only 102,000 miles on it. It’s not like it’s driven a lot.
My wife’s car is a Honda Civic and it gets something like 3,500 miles to the gallon. OK, I added some zeroes, but you get the idea. That’s our main driver. It’s a four door sedan, so all of us fit (barely, we have 3 dogs..) and it has an ample trunk for when we buy stuff once we get there or to pack in our stuff for the trip to the lake or whatever.
Both cars get dirty. Everyone’s cars get dirty, of course. Ours probably don’t get any dirtier than anyone else’s. The problem is how to clean it without wasting a lot of water or feeling guilty about wasted resources.
Well, our solution may not be the best solution, but it’s the cheapest and easiest. In our city, we have two grades of water available: unfiltered and filtered/cleansed. We have a below-grade farm spigot that produces unfiltered water straight from the well and the rest of the house is on filtered/cleaned water.
For lawn, garden, and other watering we use the unfiltered water. There’s no charge for it (it doesn’t go through a meter), but its pressure is variable according to how many people are using that water system, since there’s no secondary pump (as there is in the house).
All of that said, that’s the water we use for washing our cars. Obviously, for maximum eco-friendliness, we do this on the lawn. We wash both cars at the same time, which means our entire front lawn is covered in vehicles. Yes, our front lawn is that small. I hate grass and its maintenance and lawn is a total waste of space and resources anyway.
We use eco-friendly soap in the form of dish soap. We usually use the natural Dove or Ivory brands, but I’ve used natural detergent as well. Liquid soap is just easier. A few towels, rags, and a garden hose with a sprayer on it and we’re good to go. We usually put the soap into a bucket and fill with water to lather.
Then we dip the large rags in there and start scrubbing. Then we rinse, concentrate on the dirty parts with more scrubbing, and rinse again. That generally does most of the job for us. The water goes into the lawn, watering it, and isn’t wasted. Our cars look sparkly and everyone’s happy.
The only thing I don’t do on the lawn is the engine compartment. Every couple of months, we pony up the $2 for the car wash and take the cars in to power spray the enginess down. There’s a lot of grease, oil, and other junk in there I’d rather not have on the lawn. In every state (I looked it up), the EPA requires that car washes discharge their waste water into the sewer system for cleaning or cleanse and recycle it on-site.
Now, there are down-sides to washing your cars on the lawn. Here are a few of those:
- The dirt and garbage from your car will invariably include things you may not want on your lawn like brake dust, asphalt particles, etc. Most of the time you won’t see it or notice it, though.
- It actually uses more water (in the end) than the average self-serve car wash (more on this later).
- You run the risk of leaving tire marks on your precious lawn–if you’re one of those types.
I mentioned that self-serve car washes use less water per wash. That’s true. The EPA and Maryland’s Department of the Environment did a study and found that non-recycling, self-serve car washes use an average of 15 gallons of water per wash. Your garden hose runs at between 5 and 7 gallons per minute, so after three minutes, you’ve exceeded the car wash’s total.
Of course, that car wash is sending that water into the sewer, whereas on your lawn you’re saving yourself a lawn watering, which could amount to 20-30 gallons or more. So this probably isn’t a real issue here.
Automatic car washes, for the record, use 50 or more gallons per wash, depending on whether you paid for the economy one or the “full service, so we have plenty of time to make out behind the suds” option.
Another downer to dish soap with detergents is that it has a grease-fighting action, which removes the wax from your car’s finish. We use natural soaps with no detergents (we ad that to the dish water if needed), so that’s not an issue, but for those who use normal dish soap, you should be aware of that.
If you make your own soap as I showed you for insecticide use, that could be used here too. Pour some concentrate into the bucket and hit it with water. I can’t give you an exact measurement, but probably a cup per gallon is a little overboard.
Car washing can be a fun summertime activity, so why waste it by going to some lame car wash? You can do it in your front yard and pretend to “accidentally” shoot other people with the hose or splash them with suds.
Related posts:
- Recycling Water Filtration Cartidges (Brita, Pur, Etc)
- DIY – Drain and Flush Your Water Heater for Better Economy
- DIY – Water Aerator Cleaning for Better Flow and Less Water Waste
