/ 24 June 2011

A drive to recycle

Water care and management, sponsored by ABB
Commendation: Avis Rent a Car

Customers like rental cars to be fresh and clean, but this comes at a cost to scarce water resources.

Between 2007 and last year, Avis Rent a Car invested R2.6-­million to introduce effective water-­recycling infrastructure at its airport depots.

The facilities have state-of-the-art drive-through machines that wash a vehicle in about 45 seconds, eliminating water wastage. Used “grey” water is diverted to a separation plant, where it is cleaned and pumped back into the system to wash more vehicles.

“As a result, we are effectively ­saving about 85% of our water usage, or about 75-million litres of water a year, through ­recycling,” said Avis ­sustainability ­manager Jessica Branco. At the Cape Town and Durban airport depots, 180?000-litre underground water reservoirs were installed to capture rainwater runoff from the roofs of the Avis buildings.

The runoff is used to supplement municipal water used for final clean-water rinsing of cars. The company included ­various other sustainability measures in its entry, but the Greening the Future judges commended it in this category because of these impressive water-management innovations.

Branco said sustainability was one of the key strategic focus areas of the company and the responsibility of everyone, from the chief executive to rental agents and drivers. A waste-management programme has recycled more than 23 tonnes of waste since July last year, and energy meters installed at Avis depots measure consumption in an effort to identify opportunities for reduction.

“Our energy tests highlighted that a wash-bay area manned by only a few people was using more energy than an office building that housed more than 300 people,” Branco said. “After investigation, we discovered the dryers in the wash bay were using huge amounts of electricity.”

Switching off the dryers has saved an average 1 500kWh a day, which equates to a saving of R1 000 a day, she said.