5 Reasons You Don’t Need to Clean Your Car

If you’ve spent some time cruising around early on a Saturday morning, you’ve probably spotted your share of faithful car owners lathering suds, scrubbing bumpers, and waxing hoods. Or, maybe you’ve seen a block-long line for the car wash with its colorful soap streams, walls of foam, and whirling spongy-tentacles. There is something completely satisfying about a squeaky clean car, but the same can be said of a dirty car. Here are five reasons you don’t need to clean your car.

Washing your car can be a serious waste of water. Reports show that a 5/8” hose that is flowing at 50 psi can use up to 10 gallons of water per minute! When you consider areas out west that go through regular droughts or countries that don’t have enough clean water for their population, a clean car just doesn’t seem worth it.

Soap and chemicals can flow directly into your local watershed, which is terrible for the environment. When you wash your car at home, there’s no way for you to control this. Chemicals are washed into storm drains or directly into the soil. Professional car washes used to be bad about this, but the Clean Water Act requires car washes to pipe their used water to state approved facilities or water treatment plants.

A dirty car has character. What does a clean car say about you? It says that you just washed your car. However, a dirty car is a section of a story. That red clay caked on caked on your bumper says that you went mountain biking last weekend. That mud spray on your side skirts says that you had to go through some rough terrain to get your favorite trailhead.

Instead of spending time and or money washing your car, you could spend that time or money having fun outside! Who wants to wake up early on a Saturday and waste time hosing down a car or waiting in line at the car wash? Dirty cars let you enjoy the weekend!

This last one might be the most important of all the reasons. Let’s face it; your car is just going to get dirty again anyway. Unless you decide to Scotchgard your entire vehicle, which you should definitely not do, your car will be just as susceptible to all the dirt and grime that you just washed away!