How to Minimize Parking Lot Pollutants
Parking lot cleaning and sweeping are necessary services and should be used in all cities and suburban areas with cars as the primary means of transportation. Parking lots create pollution problems and require building, landscape, and maintenance needs along with parking lot sweeping services, which contribute heavily to further pollution problems. Recent trends have been to provide regulations for drainage and pollution abatement in an effort to minimize the amount of pollutants that are collected in and dispersed from parking lots.
The purpose of a parking lot is to hold cars for either long or short periods of time. Regardless of the timeframe, it is inevitable that a parking lot will collect pollutants and disperse them into the air and into the water. The cars increase the heat in urban areas, reduce greenspace, and they can negatively affect the environment in many different ways.
It is important that as a responsible contractor that you educate your property manager clients as to what types of pollutants are found in parking lots, as well as how property managers can minimize such issues and reduce parking lot pollutant problems.
Common Pollutants Found in Parking Lots
Because parking lots have impervious surfaces that do not allow for absorption of water and become dumping grounds for careless disposal of trash and debris, the following are examples of pollutants found in most parking lots and parking garages:
- Grease – Car grease is used to lubricate and protect gears and other mechanical parts of vehicles and cannot be absorbed by parking lot or parking garage surfaces.
- Gasoline – PAHS or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are found in combustion by-product of gasoline and also in tar based sealants used to pave and protect parking lots and parking garages.
- Heavy Metal – The metals accumulate from car batteries and airborne fumes.
- Sediment – Sediment is a natural material found on parking lots that become broken down by weather and erosion.
- Fertilizers & Pesticides – These are toxic materials used in landscaping and gardening services in and around businesses and carried onto and in parking lots and garages by cars, tires, and rainwater.
- Trash – Parking lots and garages are full of trash carried in from both inconsiderate parking lot and garage users and from natural weather occurrences, such as high winds and heavy rain.
How to Reduce Pollutants in Your Parking Lots
Because parking lots have a higher capacity than soil to absorb radiation from the sun, they create “the urban island effect.” This effect is responsible for the dramatic increase in our daily temps where there is a lot of paving. Because most parking lots surfaces are impermeable and do not absorb water, the water that accumulates must be channeled into systems that filter water or the contaminated water will flow into our water systems. As a responsible contractor, we need to inform our clients how to minimize these parking lot and parking garage pollutants to reduce their impact on the environment. Here is a list of helpful tips on how to reduce pollutants in and on your parking lots and your parking garages:
- Sign up for preventative parking lot and parking garage cleaning, scrubbing, and sweeping. Using this type of service will minimize the buildup of dust dirt and debris from any of these surfaces.
- Post notices as to where oil, antifreeze, and other toxic fluids can be disposed of or recycled.
- Make sure trash containers are emptied regularly and well placed so that visitors to your properties are encouraged to use them.
- When building, repairing, or re-paving parking surfaces, consider using permeable paving materials.
- Integrate green areas into parking lots to reduce the urban heat island effects.
- Always use environmentally friendly cleaning products for paved areas and organic fertilizers for landscaped areas.
Since parking lots and parking garages will be with us as long as cars continue to be the preferred methods of transportation, it is important to reduce the negative effects on our air and water as much as possible.
Choose KEVCO Building Services for Parking Lot Cleaning in Washington, DC, Maryland & Northern VA
From 30 parking spaces to 3000 and more, we can clean, scrub, sweep and degrease ANY parking garage, parking lot, or parking deck and vacuum up all of the debris and dirty water. With a massive fleet of Tennant ride on garage cleaning equipment along with portable and transportable pressure cleaning equipment, KEVCO has the only full-time garage cleaning team that owns and operates all equipment to peak performance for any size parking facility. Underground, above ground, or parking lots, our Garage cleaning team can do it all.
Let KEVCO help you keep dirt and debris outside where it belongs. Call our experts at (301) 258-9750 and we will be happy to provide you with a FREE, on-site estimate of your parking garage cleaning needs and will discuss what is the best and most economical solution to keeping your parking facility’s needs clean. Or, contact us online!
Serving Washington DC Metro, Northern Virginia, Baltimore and Maryland areas, including, Chevy Chase, Olney, Potomac, Bethesda, Rockville, Gaithersburg, Germantown, and beyond.
Blue Corona