How idling increases pollution
How to avoid idling
Wrapping up
How idling increases pollution
Whenever you run a non-electric car’s engine, you are contributing to harmful pollution. If it is a pure gas run engine, it leads to the most pollution created by any type of engine. It is fine to drive whatever type of car you have whenever you need to. However, letting your car run while it is parked for any reason is an unnecessary contribution to the pollution of the earth’s atmosphere. This ends up hurting the environment and our health simultaneously.
To put things in a clearer perspective, every time that your car burns through a gallon of gas, it produces approximately twenty pounds of greenhouse gasses. This means that if you idle your car through just one gallon of gas per week, for the year you will be producing just over a thousand pounds of greenhouse gasses.
How to avoid idling
If the motivation for environmental safety and your health isn’t enough, consider that you are also needlessly burning through gas when you idle your vehicle’s engine so it can end up costing you quite a bit of money. So, if you want to avoid idling your car’s engine, there are several ways you can do so. This is especially true in Puerto Rico where you will never have the temptation to “warm up” your car in cold weather.
The first way for you to avoid idling your engine is to shut your engine off when you are stopped for twenty seconds or more unless you are currently in traffic. You can also do your best to merge your trips together which would result in less overall use of your car and less temptation to leave it idling. If you have passengers in your car and they do not want to sit in a hot parked car while you run into the store, ask them to come in with you rather than sitting in the car with the air conditioning on. Finally, you can always leave a reminder on your dashboard such as a post-it note which will ensure you do not forget to shut off your engine.
Wrapping up
When you idle your car’s engine you are doing completely avoidable yet irreversible damage to the environment and possibly even your health. It is quite important that you do whatever you can in order to avoid idling your vehicle’s engine. You can make this easier by combining the trips you take with your car, ensuring that you always shut your engine off after being stopped for twenty seconds plus, you can leave a reminder on your dash board near the ignition to shut your engine off and you can encourage passengers to leave your car with you when you need to run an errand. If you ever need to ship a vehicle to or from the port at San Juan, visit our homepage for a free instant quote!
