Exactly what can we car drivers do to help save the environment and preserve a most important resource?
Today marks another United Nations World Day for Water or simply, World Water Day.
I am not writing to ask you to help the 1.1 billion people around the world living without a reliable water source, nor the 2.4 billion without adequate sanitation.
I am trying to tell you why a car (yes, that includes mine and yours) is a leading contributor to water shortages, contamination and, worst of all, poisoning.
CAR WASH
You’ve read it all before, about how a hose-down car wash wastes anywhere from 200 to 500 litres of filtered and treated water.
Even using a high-pressure water spray (like at your local car wash) it would still waste some 60 to 150 litres.
The more often you wash your car, the more water you waste that could be put to more productive use like washing your clothes, gardening or cooking.
I recently asked a car wash operator in Bangkok how often his customers visit, and he told me that most of the regular customers turn up once a week or more, often during the rainy season.
Now, if I use a median figure of 105 litre per wash – that’s 5,406 litres or about 5.4 cubic metres or tonnes of water a year for one car!
If all 8.8 million cars and pick-ups in Thailand did the same, that would be more than 48 billion litres, or 48 million tonnes of water – that’s the same as all the people living in Phuket and Phetchaburi provinces use at home in one year!
By contrast, a survey found drivers in the UK wash their cars on average only seven times per year.
If you live where tap water always flows, try visiting a drought-hit area anywhere this hot season and stay there for a week and you’ll appreciate what a blessing it is to have running tap water.
If a clean car is a must for your image and self-esteem, can you please scale down the water usage to a bucket or two of water and wipe the car with a wet cloth instead?
It would only use four to 10 litres of water – a saving of 90%.
Another concern about car washes is that the detergent and grime that’s washed away with the water will eventually affect the environment.
You can see for yourself – at any car wash in Thailand – how the water is disposed of. It is simply discharged into a public drain, which goes straight into a khlongs or rivers and ends up in the Gulf of Thailand.
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DRINKING WATER
Bottled water needs up to six times as much water to produce as is in the bottle – so, for example, a 0.5 litre bottle needs as much as three litres of water.
That’s an awful waste.
So, I tried a little experimenting at home and found that it takes no more than 1.5 litres of tap water to thoroughly wash a 0.5 litre plastic bottle.
After topping it up with home-filtered water, this bottle used up two litres of water in total.
Therefore, I could actually be saving one litre of water for every 0.5 litres of drinking water if I prepare myself.
I drink, on average, 2.5 litres of water inside my car every week – that’s 130 litres a year.
This means if I were to use my own bottle I could be saving 260 litres of water per year – more than enough to fill a bath or clean my car with a bucket every week for the whole year.
Moreover, I would not be throwing away between 217 and 260 empty plastic bottles a year – amounting to 6.5kg of almost completely unrecyclable PET plastic.
The only issue is having to thoroughly clean your bottle, especially the mouth-piece, every day or two to prevent germs from accumulating and giving you tummy trouble.