Turn Off Your Car

Turn off your car. It’s that easy. This simple task will save millions of gallons of wasted fuel. Why? Just 10 seconds of idling your car wastes more fuel than restarting it. 

It used to take a lot of gas to start a car when you had to pump the accelerator pedal before each start, particularly when the weather was cold. Now, all cars are equipped with electronic ignitions, so starting and restarting your car uses a very small amount of fuel.

It’s also better for your engine to turn it off than to leave it running. Letting your car idle is very hard on your engine components and the environment. Just two minutes of idling burns the same amount of gas as one mile of driving. Even in cold weather, new engines just need 30 seconds to warm up. Today’s cars warm up more efficiently when driving than idling.

Studies have shown that the average American driver spends over 16 minutes a day idling their vehicle. What if we could eliminate that?

• A car with a standard four-cylinder engine would save 32 gallons of gas per year. At $3.65 per gallon, that’s almost $117. You would also prevent 704 pounds of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere annually.
• A truck or SUV with an eight-cylinder engine would double those amounts. You would save 64 gallons, or $234 per year, and keep 1,408 pounds of CO2 out of our air. 
• Multiplying that out, we waste 3.8 million gallons of fuel EVERY DAY in the U.S. That’s the same as five Olympic-size swimming pools filled with fuel each day.
• The cost to us Americans is $13,444,400 in wasted fuel each day. The cost to the environment is 40,000 tons of CO2 produced unnecessarily each day, which all of us are breathing.

These numbers are staggering, particularly when the cost to us and the environment is preventable. But you can do your part to turn this around. Be part of the solution and take the pledge at www.iturnitoff.com to show your support. While you’re there, you can even get a bumper sticker to promote the cause and spread the word in your apartment community. You can make a difference starting today!