At least that’s my vote, for Inc. magazine’s "Green 50", profiling the top businesses building better sustainable products. Here’s what they have to say about Zipcar:
Not many automotive companies crow about how many vehicles they’ve managed to retire. But that’s one of the ways Zipcar, the country’s largest car-sharing service, measures success. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the car rental service has a fleet of 2,000 vehicles, 10 percent of them hybrids, available to drivers from Toronto to Minneapolis to Boston and Washington, D.C. Some 40 percent of Zipcar’s 70,000 members say that by participating they’ve avoided buying a new vehicle or gotten rid of an old one.
Since Zipcar was founded in 1999, the company estimates it has taken 25,000 cars off the road. Members pay a $25 application fee to join and as little as $7.50 an hour, or $51 a day, for a car, picking up the vehicles from parking spaces in their neighborhoods without ever interacting with a clerk. According to company surveys, the average Zipcar member drove 5,295 miles per year before joining the service and now drives just 369 miles annually. And car sharers are lining up to drive less. For the past two years, membership has grown 100 percent annually, and revenue, $15 million in 2005, is expected to double this year.
