working at the car wash [oh, oh ,oh]

This blog post idea is actually courtesy of Lu, but I thought I'd run with it since she hasn't been posting too much lately.

Washing cars...sigh. I wouldn't know anything about this since I don't own or even drive a car. But it seems that some people really, really like to have nice, clean, shiny cars.

(From Dave Gorman, via flickr.)

Washing cars requires lots of water. Big duh. But did you know that washing your car at home is actually a bigger environmental hazard than washing it at a car wash? Laser washes are actually required by law to recycle and reuse their water. So that water you use goes into a drain which then cycles the water again in the laser washes' system.

Washing it at home is bad because if you are using nasty products to wash your car then the run off from your washing can (and most likely will) seep into the ground. This will then travel to our water (streams, rivers, etc.). And this, in turn, pollutes our last remaining fresh water and pollutes the water that comes back to us in our homes.

The moral of this story: If you want to wash your car, do it a laser wash! But if you really have a hankering to do it at home then consider switching your cleaning products. There are, thankfully, green cleaning products out there. For instance - the Simple Green Car Wash.
~Am~