With California in the midst of a serious drought, Volvo is officially asking people to stop washing their cars for one month in order to potentially save as much as 18 million gallons of water.

The man behind this idea was none other than Steve Hinkle, President and GM of Volvo San Diego, who has been contributing to water conservation efforts for some time now. Hinkle has also been offering customers a voucher to be used at a sustainable, recycled water carwash, if in turn they would be willing to not wash their cars at his dealership.

However, Hinkle is looking to take things even further with the #DrivingDirty campaign, by not using any water to clean the cars on his lot – instead opting for a waterless solution. Volvo estimate that his efforts alone could potentially save over 108,000 gallons (408,000 liters) of water.

According to John Militello, Marketing & Strategy Exec for Volvo North America, “Environmental sustainability is hugely important to Volvo, and we’re excited to help inspire Californians to do their part during this terrible drought. Whether you’ve got four cars in your garage or one – maybe you’ve got a bicycle, maybe you’ve got a motorcycle – Volvo hopes that you’ll forgo your usual wash for the month of November, and start #DrivingDirty.”

What’s great about this campaign is that you certainly don’t need to have a Volvo in order to get involved and help your community. Simply turn your dirty car into a badge of honor (as Volvo puts it) and write ‘DRIVINGDIRTY’ or it, with the additional hashtag at the front – in order to make it cool, obviously.

Next step is posting a pic online and getting your friends and family involved. Pretty soon, all those efforts combined could make for a really big difference.

Volvo also went and found a couple of interesting water saving statistics for us, for example: Not washing your car once could save enough water for you to flush the toilet ten times, put on the dishwasher, brush your teeth twice and wash your clothes (if you really wanted to).

By the way, if their initial estimates are correct and Californians end up saving 18 million gallons (68 million liters) of water during the course of a month, that would be the equivalent of 27 Olympic swimming pools.

Pretty cool, right?

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