Sustainability
We believe that what we’ve built is something worth preserving – from our strong culture of customer service and employee opportunity, to the network of partnerships that binds us to thousands of neighborhoods and communities.
As a family-owned business, we are uncommonly in tune with the need to operate with the next generation in mind. This deep sense of stewardship plays out day-to-day in our commitment to managing our company sustainably – continuously working to balance the interests of our customers, our employees and the parts of the world we touch with our business.
We begin by evaluating the performance of our operating groups based in large part on how their operations maintain what we call, quite simply, “The Balance." It’s about delivering the right combination of customer satisfaction, employee development, fleet growth and profitability. We know from more than 50 years of experience that keeping a healthy equilibrium among these critical factors is essential to steady, long-term growth and the sustainability of the car rental industry overall. With that in mind, our www.DrivingFutures.com website holds us accountable and articulates how strategic principles such as Legacy, Innovation and Foresight have come to define our success for the long term.
And just as our Corporate Sustainability Report indicates, future success may be rooted in how skillfully we continue to operate our business, but it also depends on how consistently we live our values. That's why we work so hard to ensure our business operations – from neighborhood and airport car rental, to car sharing and vanpooling, to car sales and truck rental – are closely aligned with our company's founding values and collective responsibilities.
Key Stakeholders
To help us do that, we also manage our operations according to a “Cultural Compass” that guides how we interact with our customers, communities and one another. For example, we have joined forces with the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, the largest independent plant research center in the world, to establish the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Institute for Renewable Fuels. The Institute's aim is to create the next generation of alternative fuel technologies from environmentally sound plant and algal sources, thus reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and our dependence on non-renewable resources.
In addition, Enterprise is working with the Arbor Day Foundation and the United States Forest Service to plant 1 million trees throughout the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom as part of the Enterprise 50 Million Tree Pledge. Supported by a $50-million commitment from Enterprise, the private/public/nonprofit partnership already has resulted in nearly 8 million trees being planted in areas suffering damage from wildfires and other natural disasters (an interactive map of the plantings is available online).
Enterprise also partners with other important stakeholders, including the Electrification Coalition, the Corporate Eco Forum, the Transportation Sustainability Research Center, the Department of Energy’s Clean Cities initiative, and the National League of Cities' Sustainable Cities Institute.
Transportation Value Chain
Such stakeholders can help broaden discussions about the transportation value chain. For instance, in 2011, the National Summit on Energy Security – organized by Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE), the Electrification Coalition, Energy Security Leadership Council (ESLC) and the Diplomatic Council on Energy Security – brought together CEOs, military leaders and policymakers to address the intensifying threats posed by our nation’s dependence on petroleum.
In 2012, the Danforth Plant Science Center hosted a panel discussion featuring General Motors and Enterprise Holdings, which focused on the future of the passenger vehicle, including new technology, biofuel research, local mobility, supply chain responsibilities and other public policy issues.
And this year, the Wharton Initiative for Environmental Global Leadership (IGEL) published a special report titled “Next Stop, Innovation: What’s Ahead for Urban Mobility?” Enterprise Holdings sponsored this IGEL report because we not only operate the largest fleet in the world (more than one million passenger vehicles), but also 6,200 neighborhood and airport rental locations located within 15 miles of 90 percent of the U.S. population.
This unique network positions Enterprise to quickly and efficiently introduce millions of drivers to new fuel and vehicle technology. Furthermore, Enterprise can work effectively with other key stakeholders to incorporate sustainability goals into comprehensive, long-term local transportation planning, and, in the process, better meet the needs of our constituents, clients and customers in the communities we serve.