Posted by Snow in 
I watched the other day as a parade of cars struggled through the drive through of a McDonald’s. There was plenty of parking for every car and more to have been accommodated. The wait was hardly speedier that at the counter inside. And the service actually seemed to suffer through a communication tunnel of speakers orders and garbled voices.
So what kind of emissions might have been curtailed if the drive-through window had been shut of service? And if only one burger chain started shutting down their drive thru windows, wouldn’t it lead to a more sustainable carbon footprint overall? What of all burger chains did the same thing? Couldn’t an entire stripe of pollutive damage be halted from the overall atmophere and imrpove air quality?
What if pollution via car exhaust and fumes into the atmosphere was worse in some areas, like Los Angeles, and in those areas a vluntary drive thru shutdown could be enforced? Now there is a group in Utah is proposing city and county ordinances requiring a shutdown of drive-through windows on bad-air days.
“You’ve created more emissions by turning off and then restarting, actually more pollution goes into the air by doing that than waiting in line and going through a drive-through,” said Melva Sine, president and CEO of the Utah Restaurant Association.
“It’s just a matter of: Are people willing to make a modest, a small-to-modest sacrifice to improve the air quality? We certainly hope so,” said Dr. Brian Moench, spokesman for Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment. But the doctors say it’s worth a try because ozone is so unhealthy. “It’ll rust metal, it will rust stone and it burns plants. Well, it does that to your lungs,” Moench said.
Not shut down their business, but just shut down their drive-through portion of it. That wouldn’t be an economic sacrifice to anybody. It would be just a little walking,” Moench explained.
Dr. Howie Garber, who is also with the physician’s group, said, “I think it serves a purpose to get people to shut off their cars more often and to get them to think about making a small personal sacrifice.”
Recycledblog.com wonders if the customers would be more likely to patronize an establishment because on bad air days a burger or taco joint would ban drive-thru business to preserve environmental detractions. Green practices make green burgers and greener air.
The call to greenliness is clear: the sustainable living community needs and eco-friendly study that delivers a comprehensive analysis of the impact on the environment of banning drive throughs.
RSS Feed