Water restrictions in Australia require people either to wash their cars by hand without a hose or go to a commercial carwash. Water efficiency tests have shown that well-designed commercial carwashes use less water than washing cars with a hose. The end result is that local carwashes in Australia are seeing a significant increase in business.

Richard Holloway, a Queensland member of the Australian Car Wash Association’s executive committee, said car washes across the southeast corner had seen increases of about 20 per cent “pretty much across the board”.

“The industry certainly is getting a lot more cars through as a result of (the water restrictions) because people are not that interested in going through the process of washing their car with a bucket,” he said.

Mr Holloway, who runs the Carwash Headquarters at Ashmore on the Gold Coast, said all operators had to stick to new water efficiency management plans.

“In my case, we’ve put in a new water management system in the last four months and we’ll use two-thirds of the water this year than we did last year, even with the increase in business,” he said. [more...]