Car Free Day drive generates Dh200,000

Dubai Municipality donates Dh4 per participant to charity, special needs groups

Dubai residents who ditched their cars for a day have helped donate Dh200,000 to support needy people and persons with special needs in the emirate.

Dubai Municipality yesterday donated the amount as part of a Year of Giving initiative linked to the Car Free Day it observed last month.

Hussain Nasser Lootah, director general of Dubai Municipality presented cheques for Dh50,000 each to two charity organisations and two support groups for people with special needs, a senior official told Gulf News.

Khalid Badri, director of corporate marketing and relations at Dubai Municipality, said Lootah presented the ceremonial cheques to senior representatives of Dar Al Ber Society, Beit Al Khair Soceity, Dubai Club for the Disabled and Emirates Down Syndrome Association at a function held at the municipality’s head office.

Promise kept

“He has kept his promise,” Badri said about Lootah who had announced the plan to donate an amount corresponding to the number of cars that were kept off the road on the eighth Car Free Day on February 5. The first of its kind move was proposed to link the civic body’s largest environmental drive with the Year of Giving initiative.

“When the cars are off the road, it results in reducing carbon dioxide emission. Carbon emission can be offset with planting trees … Every tree is equal to money. We will be calculating the reduction in carbon emission and convert it into money and donate it to charity as this year is the Year of Giving,” Lootah had then told Gulf News.

“If you price each tree planted for a car off the road at Dh10, you can multiply the figure of 30,000 cars with 10 and it will be Dh300,000. We will donate that amount to charity,” he then said while giving an example of the calculation of the amount that the civic body would make in this regard.

The civic body had estimated that some 50,000 cars were not used by participants of the Car Free Day drive. Going by that figure, all those who ditched their cars for a day to go green and use public transport means have also indirectly contributed Dh4 each for the cause championed by the municipality.