Ban Drive-Thrus in Canada
In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. --- That time is now. -Dr. Wangari Maathai, Kenya's "Green Militant" and winner of Nobel Peace Prize, 2004
Drive-throughs are an incredible detriment to our environment and are a luxury item we can live without.
Climate Change is real. A grave threat to all life on this planet. It is time to place our environment and the health and well being of our children ahead of business interests and profits.
I demand that all levels of government impose an immediate moratorium on all new commercial drive-through operations and establish a timetable to phase out all existing drive-through operations through zoning or other by-laws.
In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. --- That time is now. -Dr. Wangari Maathai, Kenya's "Green Militant" and winner of Nobel Peace Prize, 2004
Drive-throughs are an incredible detriment to our environment and are a luxury item we can live without.
Climate Change is real. A grave threat to all life on this planet. It is time to place our environment and the health and well being of our children ahead of business interests and profits.
I demand that all levels of government impose an immediate moratorium on all new commercial drive-through operations and establish a timetable to phase out all existing drive-through operations through zoning or other by-laws.
It Is Our Children%u2019s Future at Stake %u2013 Not Ours
Tonight we have an opportunity to be the first city in Canada to impose a moratorium on new drive-thrus. We have an opportunity to send a message from our city to our country and the world that our children%u2019s health and climate change are top priorities - and our actions reflect this. A moratorium on new drive-thrus symbolizes our true commitment to tackling these issues. Tonight we have the opportunity to put London on the map in Canada and the world thus inspiring other cities to follow our lead. Cities and countries throughout the world have now recognized the extensive detrimental impact of plastic bags to our environment, life and ecosystems. Recognizing after 30 years that plastic bags were a bad idea - cities and countries are now doing what is right and eliminating them. The drive-thru is no different %u2013 other than the fact we do not see the damage close up in a literal sense. We measure the damage in emissions, illnesses and deaths. Far away %u2013 one can witness the glaciers melting faster than scientists previously thought possible and ice shelves breaking off. For the first time in history - there are more environmental refugees than refugees displaced by war. This month - we reached the highest C02 emissions that our planet has ever witnesses in 650 000 years. London currently has approx. 150 drive-thrus. Surely we do not need more with almost smog days quadrupling since 1995 and asthma becoming a local, provincial, nation & global epidemic. We now have almost two months of smog days per year in London. We live in a smog belt. Three million people a year are dying from air pollution. That is eight thousand people per day. Drive-thrus contribute to this. Interesting enough %u2013 coinciding with a car culture that includes 60% of the 129 billion dollar fast food industry being conducted at the drive-thru window - asthma has increased four fold over the last twenty years. Drive-thrus are a luxury %u2013 not a necessity. If we cannot say yes to a moratorium %u2013 for the sake of our children%u2019s health and future on our planet %u2013 then how can we ever hope to tackle the big issues? We must reduce our emissions annually by 2-3% to reach the target of 80% less emissions by 2050 which is imperative to future survival on this planet. Opening new drive-thrus is heading in the absolute opposite direction we need to be taking as a global society. Profits before children or children before profits? Convenience before children or children before convenience? The climate crisis will not respond to incremental modification of the business-as-usual model. There is an urgent need to re-conceive the issue we face as a sustainability emergency, that takes us beyond the politics of failure-inducing compromise. We need to recognize a climate and sustainability emergency, because we need to move at a pace far beyond business and politics as usual. We can start tonight by imposing a moratorium on drive-thrus. Children are the most vulnerable in our society. It is the responsibility of every adult citizen on our global planet to take every precaution to protect our children and mitigate against climate change. Corporations are not exempt. Just as all children must have the right to clean drinking water, all children must have the right to breathe clean air and a secure future on our planet.%u201D Let%u2019s kick the habit. Let us be hero%u2019s to our children and impose a moratorium on all new drive thrus.
140g/km of CO2 why add on more?
Yuppers get rid of them! Be nice if we had more round abouts to replace useless non flow traffic lights.
yaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Drive thrus are disgusting, encouraging people to idle their vehicles so close to pedestrians is not healthy, for people or the environment. Walk-ups would be a great idea though.
My students have put up a brave and persistent struggle to stop idling of school buses as well as cars, trucks etc. They have achieved remarkable results so far. Our school board accepted and advised all bus companies servicing our schools to stop idling!! We learnt last fall that other school boards are following us too. Then the students lobbied for the anti-idling bylaw in our municipality as well as a neighbouring municipality, last year. They met with the Mayor and convinced him. The result. Anti-idling bylaw was adopted by both cities!! This year, as Earth Day approaches, my students are going after the request to ban DRIVE-THRUS! We'll keep you posted for sure. Also they want to broach the subject of long line-ups at the border crossings, often 30 minutes to an hour or more. And of course, the cars, trucks, SUVs are all idling, puffing umpteen amounts of GHGs into the air. And the Arctic is melting at an unprecedented rate! Good Heavens, how long will it take for the people to realize the damage we all are causing through these irresponsible acts. The coming generations will hold us responsible! It is time to give up all these bad habits that we were all lulled into by businesses.
Line-ups of cars idling at a drive-thru add up to a lot of pollution. For the health of all Canadians, I urge our politicians at all levels to act now against the proliferation of drive-thrus.
I have written to my local Council to implore them to ban drive thrus in my community for all the reasons already stated. We have entered the 21st century and we need to avail ourselves of all the new technologies and ideas to combat climate change !
The problem with "drive thru"s is that you are often idling for upwards of 5 minutes, probably more if you're doing the morning/evening rush hour commute. Yes, drive through employees try to get food to you within 2 minutes of your order, but you've probably had to wait 5 minutes just to place one! An "Idle Thru" would probably be a more appropriate term. Drive through's are only a good idea if the TOTAL idle time is less than 5 minutes, as this is supposed to equate to the amount of gas used to start a cold car. But because drive through companies don't seem to take into account the average wait time in line, prior to ordering, they don't meet this requirement and therefore should be banned. This is not including the extra factors that drive thru's create, such as obesity because now a person doesn't even walk the 10 extra feet into the store. It also allows for increased numbers of people who litter as they are more inclined to take their food "to go" and eat on the road. I'm sure there are probably correlations as well, to the number of fast food customers and the dangerous driving acts that ensue, as people try to multitask. All in all, the "convenience" (more like aggravations) that drive thru's bring is not worth the pollution, obesity, driving hazards, littering, etc, that all follow their use. Please get rid of them. If a customer is willing to wait in their car for 10-15 total minutes for a coffee, I'm sure an in-store line up won't scare them away.
Drive Throughs are a luxury we can live without.
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4:28 pm PST, Jan 22,
David Nisbet, United Kingdom
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How much work is it to hop out of your car to get a cup of coffee or a snack? I feel like drive-thrus are enabling our laziness and tampering with the social interactions between customer and employee. When there is a drive thru as well as inside service, employees' attention is awkwardly split between the two services, and neither customer is fully attended to. One last thing is that many coffee companies are encouraging customers to bring their own cups as a conservation effort. When a car orders through the drive thru, bringing their own cup make little sense because the drink will be put on hold until the customer reaches the pick-up window to provide the cup they want to use. Pretty ridiculous.
It is time to use our cars ONLY when there is no alternative. Parking and walking to the restaurant or bank is the better alternative. Less is more. Love the earth!
It is not sustainable for us to drive to our favourite drive through restaurant for a coffee every morning. Nor do drive through restaurants offer the kind of food that will keep us out of hospital. This legislation will not only provide us with a healthier planet, but with healthier people and, as a result, lower taxes!
even though i like'em
Anytime a vehicle is running it pollutes - we need to be creative and find new ways to travel without using personal cars. Idling vehicles are an insult to an already terrible injury - bad air. I once asked (nicely) that a driver not idle her car, while running the air conditioner with all the windows open. She was not impressed and used a lot of four letter words to inform me it was none of my business. She missed the point - it is everyone's business. Ban drive throughs - fine those who are unable to connect the dots or just don't care - make them care!
Ban until we convert over to zero emission vehicles. Then after that it is ok to use them.
I have done a study at Trent University showing that idling time in a drive through exceeds that of idling time while parking, even if the ten or thirty seconds is added onto parking time to account for restarting the engine. The Federal Ministry says that if all Canadians cut their idling time by as few as five minutes in a day then 1.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide would be prevented from infecting the atmosphere. Lets save the our HOME! Tosha Ruth Kelly
Drive thrus do nothing but produce garbage, promote unhealthy eating, and pollute the air. WE DON'T NEED THEM! Stop idling please.
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2:01 pm PDT, Oct 15,
Ari R. Kolman, Canada
I beg you to please impose a moratorium on all new drive thrus. They are terrible catalysts for destruction to our country and the planet on which we live. It is a disgusting example of our Country’s lazy, bad habit, destruction and un-healthy ways. No one needs drive-thrus anymore, we’re all poor anyway and have some food at home. The food we get from each one is killing us anyway, and the money spent on these places only contribute to a bad lifestyle for every ones living. We can’t live healthy with all these places around, I wish they could just all be closed, but since they can’t, please consider a moratorium on all new drive thrus, but the ones that are old need to be inspected, and not allowed to be open 24 hours… Unless 12 of those hours are dedicated to freely feeding the poor and homeless.. There are also drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes, the homeless, and stray animals and creatures around many of them; not to mention the garbage that builds of on blocks of streets around each one, because of each one… The Seagulls need to get their food from natural environments, and the children of the patrons should all stay home and do their screaming and crying in front of the TV.. |
Food and meals must be eaten with respect. Slow down, sit down, and eat with your friends and family.
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Stop the Laziness. People managed just fine to pick-up their dinners from restaurants and cafes long before drive-thrus came along. Sure, some day perhaps we will have spoon-feeder units because it is too difficult to even lift our food to our mouths, but hopefully that will not come to fruition, despite the sheep-like, passive shift to have convenience and luxury at every turn. Our sense of entitlement must be curbed NOW.
Drive-thrus are typically a fast food restaurant thing. Customers eating there don't need any further heath problems. Burn off a few calories by walking and improve the air quality around you. Get rid of them.
Idling vehicles needlessly pollute, increasing health risks to people and contributing to the greenhouse effect. The argument that drive-thrus reduce the need for parking lots is misleading. If there is room for cars to be in line in the drive thru then there is room for them to park and go inside.
Why not just park and go in? Have a stretch break, spare the air and save some $$
Check out the advertisement next time you use an ATM at a TD Canadatrust bank. The bank states that their ATM's are powered by wind generated electricity. Meanwhile, outside cars idle while waiting to use their drive through ATM. Best of all they call their ATM's green machines. How ironic.
Seriously, how hard is it to turn of your vehicle, and go INSIDE!!! You were given legs for a reason! USE THEM!
We need to learn to live by using less energy of all kinds. Banning drive thrus are a great place to start this inevitable transition. The days of thoughtlessly burning through fossil fuels, because they are cheap, are over.
I definitely believe that drive-throughs are an uneccesary and lazy form of conducting business, or accessing a service; and should be banned as part of the overall attack on climate change, as well as helping to promote a healthier lifestyle.
NO MORE DRIVE THRUs! with gas prices rising and no forseeable change in the near future, there's now even more reason to turn off the engine and get off our fat butts for that coffee! Besides that, the state of the environment should be a major concern of everyone inhabiting this planet.
Stop the laziness, if not a full out ban. Require multi passenger and disabled drive throughs. No more single passengers in a drive through.
i think it is pathetic that so many people object to this! it saves lives in more ways that one. it saves the environment and gets people at least a little ative. obesity crisis in canada? its because people are lazy!!
I have not used a drive thru in years, and I beleive they are a luxury we can do without. Get out of your cars & get some exercise!
Stop being so lazy. Being old is no excuse, I see the elderly getting up out of there car to get food so why should the rest complain.
