Dec 21 2009
Donate Your Car to Go Green
Last week’s conclusion of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15) succeeded in shedding more light on reducing and eliminating greenhouse gases, a cause that Cars 4 Causes® has been supporting for over a decade through car donation. We realize that our individual actions have global implications, and with the Cars 4 Causes Clean Air Program®, we are doing our part to create a cleaner, greener future.
Since its inception in 1998, the Cars 4 Causes Clean Air Program® has allowed donors to make a positive impact on the health of our environment through generous car donations of their older, less fuel efficient vehicles while simultaneously generating a much needed financial benefit for thousands of charitable organizations throughout the United States.
We’ve gathered some current statistics to give you a better idea of what the Cars 4 Causes Clean Air Program® is doing, and what you can do to help.
- According to the Carbon Fund Organization, unleaded gasoline has 19.56 lbs CO2/gallon.
- According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average U.S. car usage is 12,000 miles per year.
- While the Environmental Protection Agency’s reports, states that the overall average fuel economy for passenger vehicles of 20.3 mpg. We feel the recent Cash for Clunkers program is more representative of the type of car that we send to our Clean Air Program®. Therefore, according to http://www.dot.gov/affairs/2009/dot13309.htm, the average mpg of a Cash for Clunkers trade-in was 15.8 mpg.
- According to http://www.carbonfootprint.com/plantingtrees.html, an average tree offsets 1 ton of CO2 in its lifetime (100 years)
Based on these assumptions, the average donated car emits nearly 15,000 lbs, (or 7.5 tons) of CO2 every year. In 2009 alone, Cars 4 Causes®received a total of 3,110 car donations that were sent to its Clean Air Program®, and we’ve recycled a total of 36,692 cars since the Clean Air Program® ‘s inception.
That means we’ve kept over 46 million lbs (23,000 tons) of CO2 from entering the atmosphere in 2009. Since we started, the Cars 4 Causes Clean Air Program® has kept over 545 million lbs of CO2 per year from entering the atmosphere!
These numbers are staggeringly large, but to put it into perspective, it would take almost 272,000 trees 100 years to offset that amount of carbon!
While you may not be able to plant eight trees every year to offset your carbon footprint, you can certainly donate your car to Cars 4 Causes, and put an end to those emissions for good.
Cars 4 Causes®has always made an effort to improve the health of the environment. We recognize the need for a simple, cost effective way to reduce CO2 emissions, and we are thankful for the awareness that the recent conference has brought to this issue. We hope that more people will realize the need to reduce these harmful emissions and chose donate car to Cars 4 Causes Clean Air Program® as an easy, proven solution to this global problem.
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February 1st, 2010 at 8:43 am
cars are a big pollutor so its about time they go green
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Hi. I came across your site a few weeks ago and I’d like to say thanks. It’s a great site and it really got me thinking about the car I drive and the effect it has on the environment. As a result I’ve started donating a monthly amount to a tree fund to offset my carbon emissions….so keep up the good work.