North American Idling Is The Opposite Of Green Living

Not only is unnecessarily idling your car not eco friendly, but it’s just plain disrespectful to the precious planet we’re desperately trying to protect.  I can’t even begin to tell you how much it irks me to see cars running while no one is in it or when someone is idling waiting to pick up a friend.  Obviously, at a traffic light you may not shut off your ignition, but heck, you can every other time.  I just saw 2 parked cars last night, idling away as they went into a local store and I was infuriated by the ignorance.  And how about ‘warming up the car’ idling, people idling while they wait at a drive thru, or even gridlocked traffic idling.

When you’re idling, is it really so inconvenient for you to turn the ignition and shut off your car?   Geez, when people are not eco friendly they are so blatantly lazy about it.  Turning that key to off is an extremely low-level commitment in the name of mother earth, don’t you think?  Consider the fact that you are burning fossil fuels and emitting carbon dioxide when you’re not even going anywhere!!! To the people who exit their car and leave it idling, I’m comfortable saying, how dare you?  Are you living under a rock and don’t know that carbon dioxide is the most significant greenhouse gas linked to global climate change and pollution?

I’m sure many of our readers are not guilty of this particular eco-crime, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.  In fact, it’s happening every day by the masses with an average idling time per driver of 5 to 10 minutes per day in North America.  Environmental organizations promote using a 30-second rule:  if you’re going to be idling for longer than 30 seconds, shut it off.   And, the California Energy Commission says 10 seconds – you can read more as they dispel the myths of car idling here.   Did you know that 10 seconds of idling can use more fuel than turning off your engine and restarting it?

Idling Cars is obviously not eco friendly, even just for that 60 seconds when you run into a store – next time your vehicle isn’t moving but the car is running, question why and think about exerting that tiny effort to turn off the ignition.