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Carbonfund.org and Avis Announce New Alliance

Carbonfund.org and Avis Budget Group, parent company of Avis Rent A Car and Budget Rent A Car, have announced an alliance through which Avis Budget Group will offer its corporate and retail customers a variety of carbon offset options to minimize the environmental impact of their vehicle rentals.

The new program will offer Avis and Budget customers flexible options to offset based on the length of their rental. For a $1.25 Daily offset, Carbonfund.org will offset 300 pounds of CO2. A Weekly for $5 will offset 1200 pounds, while a Monthly offset will cost $20 and will offset 4800 pounds.

The alliance with Avis is the latest in a string of partnerships between Cabonfund.org and nationally-recognized transportation brand names, including JetBlue, Amtrak, Orbitz, and others. “We are very pleased to work with a company such as Avis Budget Group, which is extremely conscious of its environmental impact,” said Carbonfund.org Executive Director Eric Carlson. “Together we will be able to make a positive impact on the future of the environment and set a standard for offsetting emissions for rental cars.”

Carlson will take advantage of the carbon offset option when he travels to Los Angeles next week for the National Business Travel Association Conference on an all-CarbonFree trip. His trip will be covered in posts to the Carbonfund.org blog.

“At Avis Budget Group, we are very concerned with how our business affects the environment,” said Ronald L. Nelson, chairman and chief executive officer, Avis Budget Group. “Teaming up with Carbonfund.org will help us advance our efforts to reduce the environmental impact of our fleet.”

The alliance with Carbonfund.org adds to the many environmental initiatives of Avis Budget Group, which is already partnering with its corporate customers to assist them with their individual carbon reduction targets. The company is also creating a formal environmental management system (EMS), which is being designed to measure and manage environmental aspects of the Company’s operations in accordance with International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14001 guidelines. The EMS will cover air, water and land quality issues, landfill contributions, resource depletion and conservation, solid/liquid waste, odor/noise emissions and other environmental aspects.

Avis Budget Group also offers its customers a variety of vehicle choices for reducing environmental impact. Out of a fleet of more than 375,000 vehicles, 63 percent of the fleet is US EPA SmartWay Certified and 25 percent of the fleet is rated at 32 miles per gallon or better. The fleet also includes a large selection of gas/electric hybrid vehicles for rent in compact, full-size and small SUV car classes.

Carbonfund.org Blog Presents How We Drive Now: Tips and Analysis

To accompany the launch of the Avis and Budget rental program, The Carbonfund.org Blog will offer a series of posts discussing the current state and future of driving in America. Topics will include:

eTolling: What is this smart new idea, and how is Avis leading the pack on promoting it?
Can GPS devices save energy? At least one environmental thought leader thinks so.
Fuel prices: will they every go back to where they were? Also: the cost of fuel vs. the cost of offsets.
Smart driving tips to help you make the most of every gallon.

Visit The Carbonfund.org Blog for these and frequently updated coverage and commentary on carbon offsets, global warming, and other environmental topics.

LayFlats Music & Arts Festival Moves Quickly To Be CarbonFree

LayFlats Music and Arts Festival is only in its second year, but already the celebration of local culture in West Lafayette, IN, is taking big steps to mitigate its environmental impact. This year, founders Johnny Klemme and Travis Easter are focused on making recycling bins ubiquitous, and encouraging carpooling, bicycling, and public transit, and offsetting the event’s carbon impact.

Through Carbonfund.org’s CarbonFree Events program, they are offsetting the festival’s likely carbon footprint and then some.

Known locally as LayFlats, the LayFlats Arts and Music Festival is an annual outdoor music and arts festival held at the Tippecanoe Outdoor Amphitheater in West Lafayette, Indiana. This multi-day family festival takes place at a 160 acre wooded park with proceeds supporting local charities to benefit children’s art therapy, outreach and support programs. The festival, scheduled for September 12-13, features 60 bands of a variety of musical styles on five stages, various music and arts workshops, and local food.

“We’ve all been involved in the art and music scenes in West Lafayette,” said Klemme, “and there had never been a festival focused solely on local art and music. This city’s full of talented people who deserve recognition, so we took it upon ourselves to make it happen.”

The Art of the Wine Négociant Returns With Cameron Hughes Wine

Cameron Hughes Wine doesn’t own any vineyards, yet it offers exceptional wine at reasonable prices. How? Through what is essentially a form of recycling—taking excess wine from some of the best vineyards in the country, bottling it, and selling it directly to wine drinkers.

This is the way of the négociant, the French term for a winemaker who assembles the product of other growers and winemakers and sells the result under its own name. Historically, négociants were the dominant force in the wine business, connecting owners of vineyards and wineries with the wine-buying public.

In the past twenty-five years, other business models have succeeded in the wine world, but Cameron Hughes Wine has created its own niche. Founder Cameron Hughes entered the wine business at a young age, and he uses his contacts to find out which wineries have too much high-quality wine. Cameron Hughes Wine then acts quickly to “rescue” it before it is blended into lesser wines. The advantage of the low overhead of this unique business model allows Cameron Hughes Wine to offer super-premium wine and make it available at exceptional prices as part of its Lot series.

This strategy has earned the company lots of positive press and growth, and Cameron Hughes Wine recognizes that as its business grows, so too does its impact on the environment. The company relies heavily on shipping services to receive wines from around the globe and make customer deliveries across the country. Cameron Hughes Wine decided that if it really wanted to break down the “true” cost of the wine, the environmental impact should be factored into the equation.

Using calculators developed by Carbonfund.org, Cameron Hughes Wine tallied up the emissions generated by its business as a result of travel, freight and customer shipping activities and signed on to the CarbonFree Program to offset its emissions. By offsetting 150,000 cases of wine—or 1.8 million bottles—Cameron Hughes Wine is the first American wine négociant company to be 100 percent carbon neutral.

“Three years ago we looked in ways we could take responsibility for the carbon emissions resulting from the production and logistics of our wine. Carbonfund.org provided the most straight-forward turn-key program available for us to quantify our emissions and purchase offsets,” said Hughes. “We think Carbonfund.org takes an innovative approach to managing carbon offset programs and they make it easy for companies like ours to get involved.”

A Revolution in Paper: Tree-free Paper from Natural Source Printing

Everyone knows paper is made from trees and that recycling paper reduces the number of trees that need to be cut down, but wood pulp isn’t the only component of paper. Traditional paper also contains up to 30% calcium carbonate, an abundant mineral with many industrial applications.

That fact prompted Mary Loyer to ask herself these questions: Is there another option to recycling paper? What other eco-friendly materials are available? Why not sell paper made not from trees at all, but mostly from calcium carbonate? Thus was born Natural Source Printing Inc, which Loyer founded in 2007. Among the many eco-friendly materials it offers for packaging, printing, and marketing materials, FiberStone™ Paper—made with no trees—has become its flagship product.

FiberStone Paper is made from 80% calcium carbonate and 20% non-toxic resin (HDPE) High Density Polyethylene. According to Natural Source Printing, FiberStone Paper requires zero trees and no water to manufacture. The calcium carbonate comes from limestone collected as waste material from existing quarries for the building and construction industry. For comparison, a ton of recycled paper uses four trees, generates two tons of waste, and requires 9,000 gallons of water.

Natural Source Printing joined the CarbonFree Small Business Program to further its commitment to the environment. “Carbonfund.org fit a number of the parameters we were searching for,” said Loyer. “It’s a not-for-profit, which means it’s mission driven with no ulterior motives. I’ve always loved the motto—Reduce What You Can, Offset Set What You Can’t—and I promote it to all my clients.”

Natural Source Printing offers consulting services to help match companies find that material that furthers their goals and complements their messages. “The way for green to work for companies is for it to make sense within the way they do business,” said Loyer. “Some companies might think it would be hard to do, but when I speak to a client, it’s a matter of finding the right material to fit their marketing campaign, and to make it clear to their customer how they are doing their part.”

Avis Budget Group Forms Alliance with Carbonfund.org

Avis and Budget to Offer Customers Opportunity to Offset Emissions

Parsippany, N.J., July 22, 2008 — Avis Budget Group, parent company of Avis Rent A Car and Budget Rent A Car, today announced an alliance with Carbonfund.org, one of the leading international non-profit organizations providing carbon offset solutions to individuals and businesses. This alliance will enable Avis Budget Group to offer its corporate and retail customers a variety of carbon offset options to enable them to minimize the environmental impact of their daily, weekly or monthly vehicle rentals.

Recycled Cell Phones and PDAs Earn Global Cooling ‘Carbon Credits’

Unique “RecyCool” Program Helps Reduce Global Warming, Offset the Effects of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Recycle Unwanted Cell Phones, Smartphones, PDAs and Handheld Devices

Toronto, Ontario, July 22, 2008 - The Wireless Source, Canada (and affiliates: PhoneBack Canada, The Charitable Recycling Program, and Wireless CellBack) and Carbonfund.org today announced the launch of a new and unique program – RecyCool – integrating cell phone recycling with the battle against climate change.

GoGreenTube.com Takes an Environmental Leadership Position by Joining CarbonFree Program

Las Vegas, NV, July 21, 2008 – GoGreenTube.com announced today that it is offsetting its carbon emissions with Carbonfund.org, one of the country’s leading carbon offset organizations. GoGreenTube.com will offset one pound of carbon dioxide for every video watched on GoGreenTube.com. This commitment establishes GoGreenTube.com as a leader in the environmental education community and demonstrates the proactive steps GoGreenTube.com is taking in the fight against global climate change.

Come Home from Summer Vacation to a Mailbox without Junk Mail

The average American gets 41 pounds of junk mail a year – credit card offers, insurance promotions, coupon packets, sweepstakes entries, and more. But the junk mail is more than just an unneeded headache. It’s a huge waste of time and natural resources.

The deluge of junk mail is never more apparent than when it’s time to sort through the mail after returning from a summer vacation. Wouldn’t it be nice to come home from relaxing and find only mail that you actually want or need?

Did you know:
• More than 100 million trees are destroyed each year to create junk mail.
• Junk mail produces more greenhouse gas emissions than 2.8 million cars.
• Junk mail wastes 28 billion gallons of water annually.
• The average adult spends 70 hours a year dealing with junk mail.
• The world’s temperate forests absorb 2 billion tons of carbon annually to help keep the planet cool and healthy.

This summer, you can stop your household’s junk mail and unwanted catalogs, thanks to Carbonfund.org partner 41pounds.org. 41pounds.org stops household junk mail by contacting dozens of direct mail companies to remove everyone in your household from marketing lists. You’ll also keep more trees in the forest doing what they do best—providing oxygen for us to breathe and absorbing carbon to cool the planet.

And when you sign up with 41pounds.org to stop your junk mail, 41pounds.org will donate $15 to Carbonfund.org, which will go toward renewable energy and reforestation projects.

“If each of us makes small changes that improve our daily lives and improve the health of the planet, imagine the collective impact we can have together,” says 41pounds.org co-founder Sander DeVries. “We founded 41pounds.org as a nonprofit service to stop the deluge of junk mail and catalogs, and to provide a simple, meaningful way for people to reduce our impact on the environment.”

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