FIRST: Southampton boost green credentials
The University of Southampton are enhancing their sustainability credentials by becoming the first university in the UK to adopt Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s car sharing programme.
Two Enterprise CarShare vehicles have been taken on by the University’s Student Recruitment and Outreach department, to provide its 20 members with a more effective transport alternative.
Employees, who travel across the country to schools, colleges and higher education fairs, historically have used a combination of daily rentals and their own cars for work journeys.
However, the University believe they can both reduce their carbon footprint and administration costs by changing employee thinking and behaviours through the new scheme.
Suzanne Carlisle, Sourcing Manager at the University of Southampton, said: “When our employees use their own cars we have no way to measure their business mileage and no control over vehicle emissions.
“The CarShare vehicles instead create a ‘virtual’ car pool of new, low-emission vehicles that our staff can book online and are encouraged to use instead of their own cars.
“We can easily track mileage and CO2, while the amount of admin has also been drastically reduced.
“Managing all those invoices and reimbursement claims created a huge amount of paperwork and instead we now only have a single monthly invoice.”
