Enterprise Drives Toward a Cleaner Environment
Posted on: Monday, 12 May 2008, 03:00 CDT
By Dalin, Shera
As the world's largest rental car company approached its 50th anniversary about three years ago, Taylor fretted about the impact so many cars had on the environment, and what should his company be doing about that. So he gathered a couple of key executives, including Pat Farrell, vice president of corporate responsibility, to discuss how Enterprise would celebrate its golden anniversary, as well as reaching the one-million-car ownership mark.
"He was really asking us to look at how big we have become and the impact on the communities where we reside," Farrell says. "We needed to understand and address how our business touches society."
That meeting launched an ambitious environmental sustainability initiative that Taylor hoped would not only help cut down on greenhouse gas emissions from cars, but also build goodwill with customers.
"Taking care of the environment is the right thing to do, but for Enterprise it is more than that; very simply, it is a business imperative if we are to continue to run our business and serve consumers successfully into the future," Taylor says.
To that end, we must have access to an adequate supply of vehicles, have a plentiful fuel supply and have society's acceptance to operate our vehicles. And while none of the initiatives we are undertaking represents a total solution, we believe our environmental stewardship ptatform encompasses solid steps in the right direction."
The nationwide tree-planting initiative, which garnered a visit from First Lady Laura Bush when it was announced in 2006 in Forest Park, continued the Taylor family's conservation efforts and widened them to national parks around the country. The planting effort will also extend to the other nations where Enterprise does business. The private/public/nonprofit partnership of Enterprise Rent-A-Car, the Arbor Day Foundation and the U.S. Forest Service will plant 1 million trees a year until 2056 in national forests in the United States, Canada and Europe.
"The Taylor family wanted to say thank you to the world for the first 50 years - with a gift for the next 50 years," Farrell says. If we were to try to offset the carbon emissions from our fleet, we'd have to plant 50 million trees a year. But the more you get into it, the more you understand that you will have to look at things beyond that."
So Enterprise created the carbon offset program that matches dollar-tor-dollar every customer who opts for the $1.25 offset fee for each rental. The company sells about 1,000 offsets a day. The funds generated by customers and the company match will be used by TerraPass to support eco-friendly projects such as methane capture programs on dairy farms and landfills. Methane is one of the contributors to global warming.
"Research also shows that 20 to 40 percent of American consumers will make a decision to do business with a company if it believes it is committed to the environment," Farrell says.
In the United Kingdom, Enterprise hopes to roll out the carbon- offset program as soon as its information technology can accommodate customers who wish to participate.
Enterprise also focused its green efforts on its fleet in two areas, making it more fuel efficient and operating the vehicles on alternative fuels. The company already has 440,000 vehicles that get 28 miles to the gallon or more and another 264,000 that have earned the Environmental Protection Agency's SmartWay certification mark for lower emissions.
"We have assembled the most fuel-efficient fleet in the world," Farrell says. "That's what we thought we should do."
Some 4,000 cars operated by Enterprise and its sister car rental companies, National and Alamo, are hybrid vehicles that use gasoline and electricity. And Enterprise would like to purchase even more of the hybrids, but the number available is limited because of such high demand.
"We'd like to have tens of thousands more, but we can't get them," Farrell notes.
Instead, the company groups FlexFuel vehicles for rent near stations that self E85 to further encourage the use of that fuel.
"That means you are giving E85 an opportunity to prove its worth in a free-market setting," Farrell says.
In response to customer interest, the company also began offering hourly rentals in its Chicago-area offices to cut down on vehicle emissions from drivers who only needed cars for short trips. That program has expanded to New York, Seattle, St Louis, Washington, D.C. and other major metro areas.
In St. Louis, Enterprise launched the WeCar car-sharing program earlier this year for people who live downtown, employees who carpool or use mass transit, and students, faculty and staff at Washington University. The idea is to provide hybrid vehicles for those who need to make short trips and who don't have or want to rely on cars.
And while managing fleet efficiency and conservation are important elements of Enterprise's green initiative, the company is also backing research into alternative fuels such as switchgrass, corn stalks and other bio matter. Enterprise partnered with the Danforth Center to advance research into the next generation of fuels that could replace fossil fuels.
The federal government is pushing for higher and higher use of ethanol. It could come from switchgrass, sugar cane or other sources," Farrell says. "We are not the federal government, so it's really not our call.
"The issue today is that you cannot find enough land, water or fertilizer to grow these types of crops. While we can engage in the conversation today, the alternatives in the marketplace are E85, the flex-fuel engine and the gas-electric engine. Is ethanol the answer? I don't know. I'm not qualified to make that statement."
The Taylor family and Enterprise have given more re than $120 million in charitable contributions or investments in green projects over the last decade.
"It's too important to us (not to do it)," Farrell says. "The best thing that can happen is when the pragmatic needs of the business are well aligned with the needs of society."
While Taylor's idea with the green initiatives was to protect the environment and generate goodwill among customers, it also had the unexpected effect of engendering excitement among the company's 70,000 employees.
With each and every announcement on the environmental front, I get more positive feedback from our employees," Taylor says. "It is something that very much resonates with our employees base as well as with the world right now."
In the future, Enterprise will look at the waste, electricity and water use from its 8,000 offices worldwide and how to mitigate the environmental impact of that. The company already uses recycled paper at its headquarters and in its rental contracts. It has also converted its information technology to a type of server that saves the equivalent of the carbon dioxide emitted by 500 vehicles a year.
The issue of environmental stewardship is permeating the company," Farrell says.
But Taylor sees an even larger rote for Enterprise.
"In the future, I hope we can continue to play a valuable and constructive role as a catalyst - bringing together entities from the public, private and nonprofit sectors to address issues that concern us all. And we will continue to leverage our fleet to help give alternative fuels and technologies a chance in a free-market environment," Taylor says.
"We will evolve our environmental plat-form by looking for additional ways to address the parts of the world touched by our business, and we hope this gives our customers one more reason to choose to do business with us."
Today, Enterprise has a five-pronged approach to reducing the environmental impact of its fleet and spurring development of cleaner-burning or alternative fuels:
(1) Planting 50 million trees in national forests over 50 years.
(2) Operating 70,000 FlexFuel cars and trucks that burn an ethanol-gasoline mix known as E85 to reduce emissions and dependence on foreign oil, along with 4,000 hybrid cars with gas-electric engines. Earlier this year, Enterprise began offering WeCar hourly hybrid rentals at Washington University in St. Louis and in downtown St. Louis.
(3) The Taylor family provided $25 million to create the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Institute for Renewable Fuels to research with the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center alternative fuels such as those made from switchgrass and corn.
(4) Working with its partner TerraPass, Enterprise offered customers the opportunity to benefit the environment by offsetting the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions generated by their car rentals. By opting in during the reservation process to pay $1.25 per rental, customers can fund certified offset projects that work to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. The company will match customer offset purchases dollar-for-dollar up to $1 million.
(5) Amassing the world's largest fleet of fuel-efficient vehicles, with 440.000 averaging 28 mpg or better and more than a quarter-million vehicles that have earned the Environmental Protection Agency's certification of lower emissions output.
Copyright St. Louis Region Commerce and Growth Association Apr 2008
(c) 2008 St. Louis Commerce Magazine. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: St. Louis Commerce Magazine
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