Resource: Clean Car Campaign

Title:	Clean Car Campaign
Resource type:	Program/project
Topics:	Energy, Individual Choices, Statewide/Global, Transportation
Keywords:	auto standards, polluting, car pollution, clean cars, green cars, clean production, LCA, EPP, EPR
Audience:	Government, Citizens, Nonprofit
Region:	Minnesota Statewide, Outside Minnesota
Summary:	A coalition of organizations is conducting a campaign to promote purchase and production of less polluting automobiles.
Content:	A coalition of organizations (including Environmental Defense, Union of Concerned Scientists and the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy) are running a campaign to promote future automobiles that would be much less polluting and much more energy- and materials-efficient than today's in terms of their production, use, and end-of-life disposal. This Clean Car Campaign seeks to measure annual progress in mass production and the mainstream market towards clean and efficient technologies and practices. The campaign challenges the automobile industry to design vehicles that are: * Cleanly produced (considering impacts from materials extraction, supply chain operations, and assembly as well as the need for healthy workplaces). * Minimally polluting in operation (considering energy use and emissions of product, frequency and extent of maintenance and repair, and wear on the existing infrastructure and pressure to expand road systems). * Long-lived and comprehensively reused or recycled at the end of their useful life. The campaign coalition is actively collecting pledges for its Clean Car Pledge from individuals and fleet buyers willing to consider purchasing vehicles that meet the campaign's Clean Car standards, at a reasonable cost and without sacrificing safety and practicality. The pledge specifically challenges automakers to produce and market vehicles that: (1) are 50% more fuel efficient than other vehicles in their class; (2) meet California's stringent tailpipe emission standards (SULEV) and (3) are cleanly manufactured with non-toxic, recyclable materials. Pledges are used to help convince automakers that there is a market for vehicles that utilize best available environmental practices and technologies. For more information about the campaign and the pledge, visit the web site below, which also has useful links to other sites related to cleaner automobiles, such as resources on the life-cycle impacts of automobiles, and information about the greenest cars and trucks on the market today. There are also links from this site (under Resources) to an on-line calculator for your vehicle's emissions, to the process of greening local government fleets (from the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives - ICLEI), and to ACEEE's Green Book: The Environmental Guide to Cars & Trucks - http://www.greenercars.org/ (from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy). Similar to ACEEE's guide is the EPA's Vehicle Guide, which gives information about the air pollution emissions and fuel economy performance of different vehicles at http://www.epa.gov/autoemissions/ At http://www.fueleconomy.gov is a calculator reporting fuel efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions, and air pollution, by vehicle.
Website:	http://www.cleancarcampaign.org
Suggested by:	Philipp Muessig
Added:	11/27/00
Updated:	05/13/11