Enterprise Rent-a-Car, the nation’s largest rental car company is going green. Eco-friendliness is a new initiative the company is embracing as they commit to alternative fuel research.
The company wants to have a fleet of fuel-efficient vehicles, FlexFuel vehicles and gas/electric hybrids within its 1.1 million vehicles currently in fleet. FlexFuel cars use E85 fuel, which is renewable, produced in the U.S. and lowers greenhouse gas emissions.
It has taken the company two years to develop this new eco-friendly strategy towards their rental cars. The company has also pledged to plant a million trees per year, to purchase more ethanol-based or alternative fuel vehicles, and print company documents or magazines on recycled paper.
Before 2006, Enterprise operated approximately 3,000 gas/electric hybrid vehicles, which are run by a combination of gas and battery-generated electricity. According to a press release, the St. Louis-based company has the most fuel-efficient being driven on the roads then anywhere else in the world. There were 334,000 vehicles, which is 47 percent of its rental fleet, that are being used on the streets.
In 2006, Enterprise purchased 41,000 flex fuel vehicles, the majority of them from General Motors, which burned gasoline or ethanol. These cars were placed at filling stations that sold ethanol. The eco-friendly cars fleet grew to about 900,000 vehicles. This alternative fuel will reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that affect our environment so negatively today.
Enterprise also partnered with the Arbor Day Foundation in 2006 on their pledge to plant 1 million trees every year for the next 50 years. These trees will help save our environment and help get rid of some of those nasty gases like carbon dioxide.
Enterprise will begin to use recycled paper this year, with 30 percent post-consumer material, for rental contracts, according to a press release. The company believes that more than 2,730 mature trees every year, or 10 acres of forest, will be saved due to their new initiative. The company will print more than 3 million pages a year on recycled paper.
Enterprise has a green future ahead of it; and having a “green” edge over other rental car companies may help Enterprise last longer then any rental company out there; especially if other car rental companies don’t have the greener technology available.
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