June 16, 2008

The team at Green Motion, the green car hire specialists, have come up with another way to reduce the carbon footprint of their fleet of cars – they’re planting a tree for each active customer!

Whilst already offering the latest in low CO2 vehicles for hire, the latest step reinforces Green Motion's commitment to reducing the environmental impact of their business.

Richard Lowden, founder of Green Motion, said ‘while Green Motion is clearly the most environmentally focused vehicle rental operation in the world we do not wish to rest on our laurels and are continually investigating how to further improve our business offering’.
 
Richard went on to say ‘the issue of carbon offsetting is a complicated one with many carbon offsetting schemes proving to be valueless both in terms of the benefit to the environment and also to the customers paying for the privilege. In many cases, standard carbon offsetting schemes, some of which have been adopted by our competitors, do more harm than good and can be described as green wash.’

Green Motion is pleased to announce its affiliation with Trees4Good who are a socially and environmentally focused organisation who have adopted a sustainable approach to carbon offsetting.

Commencing in June 2008, Green Motion, in conjunction with Trees4Good, will plant a tree on behalf of each and every one of its corporate and retail customers - you rent a car - we plant a tree. The cost of this programme will be absorbed by Green Motion and its network and therefore the company will not be asking its customers to opt in or out or in fact pay for each tree planted.

The tree planting campaign undertaken by Trees4Good is mainly concentrated on the rain forests in Brazil and Borneo. Their objective is to concentrate on re-forestation where the rain forest has been decimated providing employment for the local population as well as the ability to grow crops that in turn will allow the locals to be self supporting and be in a position to provide a sustainable future income which will contribute towards education and health care. Planting trees and subsequently harvesting their crops, which in turn are sold through the fair trade system to retailers including Tesco, Marks and Spencer and the Co-Op deters, at can provide revenue as a result of the crops which results in deterring the local population from cutting the trees down for profit.

The carbon benefits for each tree planted will more than offset each rental vehicle during its operational life with Green Motion, creating the world's first and only carbon negative vehicle rental operation.

Richard Lowden went on to say ‘we feel that Trees4Good is the perfect partner for Green Motion as they are not only committed to saving the environment but have taken an extremely moral and sustainable approach.’

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