A report from industry-specific information provider Datamonitor notes how water saving aspirations can depend largely on how consumers choose to clean their cars.

Despite classing the use of professional car washing services as a luxury, the market researcher finds that more than half a billion pounds was spent in the UK on keeping vehicles clean last year.

This includes both automated car washes and their human counterparts, with drive-through valet services seeing popularity.

"Hand car washes - including those we see in our supermarket car parks - now account for 45 per cent of the commercial wash market," says analyst Alex Jeater.

However, automatic car washes and jet wash services both look set to play a part in the market for some time to come, the researcher adds.

Automatic car washes in particular could bounce back if droughts hit the country, Datamonitor says, thanks to their economical use of water.

Research from the International Carwash Association shows conveyor-based automatic car washes in particular can use wastewater reclaim to improve water saving efforts, whereas self-service hand washes do not have as much potential to do so.