METRO Celebrates Earth Day with Green Drive
Thursday, April 17, 2008 4:44 PM
Herbal tea giveaways are just one way METRO plans to celebrate Earth Day at the Houston Zoo and the Houston Arboretum this weekend.
Next Tuesday is Earth Day, but starting this weekend, you'll find METRO tables full of brochures and freebies that show how the agency goes green all year long.
We'll be at the Houston Zoo this Saturday and Sunday, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. with a display table about our services, brochures on our hybrid buses and free animal posters.
Also on Saturday, we'll be at the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
"METRO celebrates and promotes green year round, and we are excited to particpate in national Earth Day. We live and breath it and promote it every day," said Karen Marshall, METRO's director of community outreach.
But METRO isn't green just on Earth Day weekend. Last April, we rolled out 10 new hybrid buses and simultaneously launched our Bikes on Buses program. All local buses have bike racks now. We have 34 hybrid-electric local transit buses on the streets and expect to have 100 more by this fall.
Right now, we are also road testing a new commuter hybrid bus, and we expect to have 52 of those on the road by the end of the summer. These hybrid coaches will be used for our new Airport Express Shuttle and our Park & Ride runs.
Behind the scenes, METRO continues to go green. We recycle the water used to wash our fleet, cutting the number of gallons used per bus by 14 percent. We also recycle scrap metal, tires, batteries wood palettes and oil. And we use green-tipped florescent lamps which contain lower levels of mercury.