Nov. 21, 2007 — The Maine Township Highway Department is sharing its "green" initiative to reduce fuel consumption and pollution from the fleet of vehicles used to service the area. With the help of a Park Ridge consulting firm called Green Transportation Solutions (GTS), Highway Commissioner Robert Provenzano developed a Green Fleet Manual and distributed it statewide this week at the 100th annual meeting and educational conference of the Township Officials of Illinois.

Provenzano printed 1,000 copies of the step-by-step manual and made them available to other townships at no charge. The manual is full of practical, useful information which can be applied to virtually any car/truck fleet operation.

"We did something in Maine Township to help reduce the effects of global warming," says Provenzano. "There is a lot of discussion going on in this area so we have decided to take positive action with a change in our operations. We save taxpayer money, reduce harmful emissions, and use cleaner fuel."

He added that the manual is his way to share what his department learned from its experiences and the expertise of GTS and its founder Alexander Barton.

GTS offered initial consultation to Maine Township free of charge in the hopes that other Townships in Illinois could see how easy it is to be green.

In the initial evaluation, GTS surveyed the current fuel and fleet status of the Maine Township Highway Department. It proved that Maine Township was already using a small amount of renewable fuel, like ethanol and biodiesel, and that there was also a no-idle policy in place.

"The evaluation proved that under the current idle-reduction policy, the Highway Department had saved 680 gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel in a one year time period," said Barton. "Since every gallon of fuel burned releases about 22 pounds of CO2, the leading pollutant causing global warming, the Highway Department has independently stopped 14,960 pounds of CO2 from entering our local environment over the past year."

The effort is also being helped with another fuel saving and emission cutting technique; using renewable fuels grown locally in the Midwest. The current fuels used to power the Township fleet are composed of a blend of ethanol (10%) and biodiesel (11%) which both reduce total petroleum consumption.

GTS recommended the Highway Department increase the biodiesel blend to 20%, since it is already available from its current fuel distributor and can be used with no modifications to the current fleet of diesel trucks.

GTS also advised Commissioner Provenzano to incorporate a tire pressure screening system to make sure all vehicles are operating at proper levels. By doing this, it is estimated that the Highway Department reduces fuel consumption by an additional 5-10%. This reduces fuel cost even more and stops additional CO2 from entering the environment.

"In the near future, we are also going to look at purchasing hybrid-powered work trucks," says Provenzano. "This should help us reduce fuel consumption by an additional 25%."

For more information, please visit www.greentransportationsolutions.com or contact Barton at 847-698-5069.

Press Release