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In an industry first, General Motors' Chevy brand has created a green label for its cars and will roll out the sticker bearing environmental data next month starting with the 2012 Chevy Sonic.
The Ecologic label (pictured below) will be affixed to the driver's side rear window of Sonic sedans and hatchbacks in the U.S. market by the end of February, GM and Chevy announced today. The automaker also said it will place Ecologic stickers on all cars under the Chevrolet nameplate for the 2013 model year.
"We've taken an environment leadership role (with the Chevy Volt electric car) and we thought this was the next evolutionary step," said Chevy Brand Marketing Manager Bill Devine.
"From a sustainability point of view what this signals, I think, is that we're trying to provide consumers with relevant information that we know they're very interested in," said Mike Robinson, General Motor's vice president of sustainability and regulatory affairs.
Devine and Robinson talked to me this morning about the auto company's latest green initiative, which it undertook with the Two Tomorrows group as the validator of environmental claims.
The Ecologic sticker is the first voluntary and third-party certified label of its kind for autos, although environmental product labeling is becoming more prevalent in the U.S. for building materials.
Federal regulators, which require car companies to disclose fuel consumption data and other vehicle information on new cars sold in the United States, revamped their labeling last year to make it even more explicit. And in California and New York, new cars also must display a global warming scorecard.
Supplementing the mandated information, the sticker devised by Chevy tells prospective buyers about the environmental measures taken at manufacturing and assembly facilites, fuel-saving technology in the car, and the percentage by weight of material in the car that can be recycled.
The idea is to convey what Chevy has done to ease the environmental impacts of its cars during its lifecycle -- or "before the road, on the road and after the road," as Devine put it.
Fuel consumption data is
Fuel consumption data is missing on the sticker, and I am wondering why they are not putting it on it. Isn't that the most important eco data of a car? It's nice if 20 % of the energy for air condditioning of the manufacturing facility comes from landfill gas, but what about the fuel consumption of the car? There's no hard facts about that at all on the label. Three aspects about fuel saving technologies, but no data.
Recyclability: 85 % is the minimum by law in the European Union, so GM is doing not only a single digit extra here (from 2015, EU requires 95 %).
Just compare the information to what other makes, especially European brands, tell about why their car is green. Then one can see that GM really has a long way to go to step up.
I like the idea lets the
I like the idea lets the consumer read what the salesman should be telling them about how and where the car is built. A truly Green buyer can show off that he/she practices what they preach. It also helps this manufacturer show that they are doing what they need to and want to do to help the environment.
Seems silly to me, and it
Seems silly to me, and it creates more cost to the product, and a label generates energy and material to be created. So GM, are we just too stupid to read the manual to get this information and why not have a product site on the web where this can be posted. This is and example of Green gone amuck and it plays into the idea of
"cost" to go green. GM seems to be spending too much taxpayer money on trivial and poorly thought out ideas.
To the point of costs for the
To the point of costs for the sticker and energy used for making it - compared to the car, it's emissions for making and when driving, you wouldn't even be able to see it in a graph. So if it helped to make more people focus on green it would be worth it. But given the lack of substantial information on the label, I doubt it.