Biofriendly Cleaning Tips For Your Car

Image by VirtualErn

One of the things I always see are articles covering biofriendly cleaning tips for around the home.  What I haven’t seen much of are tips for cleaning your car.  Since most people spend hours a day in their car, you’d think they’d want to ensure their car was clean, smelled fresh and wasn’t full of toxic odors.

Many cleaners, and especially car cleaners, contain chemicals that while they might “clean” your dashboard, seats, console, etc., they don’t do anything for the environment or for the air you are breathing.  Besides, unless you have a convertible, you are going to spend your drive in the confined space of your car, breathing in the chemicals you cleaned with.  Personally, I can’t stand the smell of store-bought car cleaners or air fresheners, convertible or not.  I mean really, who needs a “pine tree” air freshener hanging from their rear-view mirror?

So, here are some biofriendly tips for cleaning your car:

• Rather than using a store-bought cleaner for the leather inside your car, try linseed oil.  It is a great natural cleaner and helps protect the leather.  If you want to get a store-bought cleaner, try organic leather cleaners.
• Some people like to wash their own car rather than taking it to a car wash (NOTE: Many car washes are designed to recycle and reuse the soapy water so it doesn’t just run into the nearest storm drain.)  If you want to wash your car, remember to turn the water off when you aren’t using it.  Then use an environmentally-friendly car soap such as No Rinse™ Wash & Shine, which they say requires only 1-2 gallons of water to wash your entire car.
• For an air freshener, make your own. Here is a good tip from Planet Green on how to do that.  The nice thing about home-made fresheners is you can make one to match a scent you like and it doesn’t have the chemicals other air fresheners have.
• Then don’t forget to clean the inside of your car’s engine by using an effective fuel additive.  An effective fuel additive will help create a more complete burn of the fuel you are putting into your car.  This way you won’t end up with as much sludge.  Instead, you’ll increase fuel efficiency and generate less harmful emissions.  Good for you and your car.

Choosing to use biofriendly cleaning products for your car is a personal choice.  But why bother spending the money on costly cleaners full of chemicals when natural cleaners will do the trick, without the harm to you or the environment.  What are your biofriendly car cleaning tips?