Enterprise drives toward a cleaner environment

St. Louis Commerce Magazine, Apr 2008 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.