Filed under: Hybrids/Alternative, Green, Ford, Lincoln, Mercury
Ford to announce "Greener Miles" environmental program
According to
Reuters, Ford Motor Co. is set to announce a new program that will enable customers to invest in clean energy
projects to offset the carbon dioxide they produce by driving. The "Greener Miles" program is a partnership
between Ford and California group TerraPass, an organization that has pioneered
carbon offsets for individuals.Preliminary information about Ford's Greener Miles program is available at the TerraPass website here. According to Reuters, Ford customers' contributions - ranging from $29.95 to $79.95 a year - will be invested in U.S. projects that counterbalance the carbon dioxide they produce through driving, including wind energy farms. Ford already uses carbon offsets to balance the emissions created during the manufacturing of its hybrids.
Consumers who participate in the program receive a windshield sticker verifying that they have offset the carbon dioxide produced by their vehicle. The TerraPass program is available to owners of any vehicle, not just vehicles in the Blue Oval fold. To see how much carbon dioxide your vehicle pumps out in a year, check out their handy calculator widget here.
[Sources: Reuters UK, TerraPass]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dr. Woo 10:32AM (4/27/2006)
A fine idea. Sure beats paying the premium for a hybrid. Let's hope progress is made!
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salsa 10:40AM (4/27/2006)
Me thinks they have a big grammatical error in that tag line.
Me suppose they're not worried about not attracting the smart money.
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Richard Warren 10:46AM (4/27/2006)
Interesting calculator. Not a bad idea either
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S 10:49AM (4/27/2006)
Should be "My Ford and I...", not "Me and my Ford". Idiots!
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doug 11:08AM (4/27/2006)
Better idea: go get newspaper, go to the classifieds, find a junker car, buy it and have it crushed. Don't feel bad about your 2006 ULEV emitting car/truck when these old, out of tune cars are polluting many times as much.....
I could see buying a TerraPass to offset the emissions created by your plug in electric car, but otherwise the benefits seem nebulous to me.
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iQuack 1:33PM (4/27/2006)
More feel-good nothingness from Ford, America's premier maker of hulking, consumer trucks.
What do you expect from a pig but a grunt?
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Aki 2:42PM (4/27/2006)
Buy a hulking gas guzzler, then spend $30 bucks a year for the environment. That's like chopping down a rain forest and planting a single parsley plant in its place.
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Elisabeth Burch 12:38AM (4/28/2006)
That pathetic grammatical error was the FIRST thing that I noticed! (That particular use of bad grammar happens to be one of my pet peeves.) Hopefully they will correct it - Maybe they thought they were being 'cute' - but it's NOT. The IDEA sounds like a good one. A better slogan would be more effective.
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Adam 9:36PM (4/28/2006)
Hi folks,
Thanks for your thoughts on TerraPass. A few comments:
We certainly don't advocate buying using a TerraPass as an excuse to buy a gas guzzler (and it costs more than $30 to offset a guzzler). Our mantra is to conserve as much as you can, and then offset the rest. Even hybrids burn a lot of fuel. Offsets are useful way to get all the way down to carbon neutral, and they have the useful side effect of supporting clean energy production in the US. But they aren't a replacement for conservation.
Now on to a more important topic: grammar. We are well aware that the grammatically correct formulation is "My Ford and I..." We also know that 9 out of 10 marketers agree that the correct formulation sounds somewhat stiff. Moreover, as amateur linguists, we can make a strong case that the "Me and my Ford..." is perfectly grammatical, because it is a common, colloquial usage, and grammar is actually defined by custom, not by rulebook. Otherwise, we would all still be talking like Chaucer. Finally, we have been in this business long enough to know that some people are deeply offended by our use of this colloquialism, and nothing we say will ever appease them. So we say, vive la difference!
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