What is the Subaru Loves the Earth Initiative?

April 19th, 2023 by

All crossovers, sedans, and crossovers in our Ewing Subaru of Plano new car inventory come standard with Subaru’s Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive, which in addition to its inherent safety advantages, Subaru hopes will encourage its owners to explore North America’s great outdoors. However, Subaru knows that truly loving the great outdoors involves more than just seeing it. There is taking the responsibility to protect and preserve it as well. That is at the heart of the Subaru Loves the Earth initiative.

National Park Foundation Partnership

National Park Foundation logoThere are many facets to this initiative.  Perhaps best known is Subaru’s status as the largest corporate partner to the National Park Foundation. In 2021, Subaru expanded this partnership’s environmental impact by focusing on three initiatives:

 

  • Outdoor Exploration: Inspire a lifelong love of the outdoors and support programs to help people feel welcome in parks.  The program will place emphasis on multicultural and multigenerational families, eliminating barriers and promoting broader access to national parks.
  • Parks of the Future: Subaru will help the foundation use technology and innovation to better prepare its parks for the future. As an example, Subaru will help fund programming focused on the planning and infrastructure to accommodate electric vehicles in and around national parks.
  • Resilience and Sustainability: Subaru will fund enhancements of environmental stewardship efforts in the national parks, including expanding waste reduction, recycling, and visitor education.

Don’t Feed the Landfills

Don't feed the landfills As part of the Resilience and Sustainability goal, Subaru is working with the National Park Conservation Association to reduce waste through its Don’t Feed the Landfills Initiative. The initiative concentrates efforts on three national parks – Yosemite, Denali, and Grand Teton.

Through more than 1,000 waste and recycling bins, the program has diverted over 17 million pounds of waste from landfills in the past seven years. In 2021 alone, it helped: 

  • Yosemite divert over 90,000 pounds of food waste
  • Grand Teton saves over 132,000 gallons of water through paper recycling
  • Denali saves over a year of landfill space simply from corrugated cardboard recycling. 

Overall, the Don’t Feed the Landfills program saved $1,198,532 in waste costs for the National Park Service and its park partners.

Eco-Friendly Dealerships

Recycling Bins at our Subaru DealershipTen years ago, Subaru launched the Subaru Eco-Friendly Retailer Program to inspire its dealerships to align their operational activities with the manufacturer’s environmental focus.  The program has certified more than a third of Subaru retailers as Eco-Friendly and which includes Ewing Subaru of Plano. To do so, Ewing Subaru of Plano and all other certified dealers had to meet specific requirements in the following areas:

  • Energy Efficiency
  • Water Conservation
  • Recycling
  • Waste Management
  • Community Involvement

You may see some of the Zero Waste Boxes™ at our location.  More than mere recycling bins, Subaru has partnered with TerraCycle® to recycle plastic trash that is particularly difficult but possible to recycle, such as disposable cups, lids, and straws. So far, the Subaru Loves the Earth initiative has recycled over 8 million pieces of trash. 

Preserving and Planting Forests

National Parks Conservation Association LogoSubaru and retailers like Ewing Subaru of Plano have partnered with the National Forest Foundation to help restore and reforest public national forests affected by severe wildfires. Since 2019, over 1,000,000 trees have been planted in national forests in California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. 

Subaru Products and Gear

This past year, Subaru launched its first all-electric vehicle, the Solterra.  Crossover with standard all-wheel drive, it enables its owners to tour this country’s great outdoors 100% emissions-free.  It is part of Subaru’s goal of applying electrification to all its vehicles by the early 2030s.  In addition, all Subaru-branded clothing and gear are now processed entirely at a zero-waste-to-landfill facility. 

Buying a Subaru from Ewing Subaru of Plano certainly won’t save the environment on its own, but it is a good step in that direction, and both Subaru and Ewing encourage you to embrace all of the Subaru Love Promise and join us in contributing and developing these and other environmental initiatives. 

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