01/31/12 3:19pm

Article By: CleanTechnica

January 31, 2012 By Charis Michelsen

For the first time in the United States, cars on the road will bear a green label with environmental data proudly proclaiming themselves to be eco-cars. The company creating this new sticker is none other than GM’s Chevy brand, and the first car to show off its environmental data will be the 2012 Chevy Sonic.

Global Warming Scorecards

Chevy’s Ecologic sticker is a totally voluntary response to a motion towards environmental product labeling in the United States. California and New York, for example, require new cars to have a “global warming scorecard,” and federal regulations have been modified to require super explicit information on fuel consumption.

Placed in the driver’s-side rear window, Chevy’s sticker will have some bullet points about the measures the company is taking to reduce its environmental impact—how much of the car can be recycled, fuel-saving tech in the car, and the greener parts of the manufacturing process. As it’s not large enough to hold all the information Chevy wants you to have, the company is also launching a website with more details, expected to go live in February.

A Sticker for Every Chevy

While the first batch of stickers is just going on the Sonics, every 2013 Chevy will get its very own sticker. The Sonic is the test run this year partly because it’s totally new, and partly because it’s fairly unique in the United States. The company can more easily track information, such as carbon emissions during manufacturing, on the sticker for the trial run.

Chevy brand marketing manager Bill Devine spoke briefly about the sticker as it fits in with other environmental measures taken by GM in recent history, as reported by Business Green:

“We’ve taken an environment leadership role (with the Chevy Volt electric car) and we thought this was the next evolutionary step.”

The Volt and the sticker aren’t the sum total of GM’s green initiative—it’s also trying to get zero-waste-to-landfill status, for example—but they’re the most easily visible to the average consumer in a bid to put the rest of GM’s environmental efforts in the spotlight.

Mike Robinson, GM’s vice president of sustainability and regulatory affairs, is pretty enthusiastic about both the sticker and how it fits into GM’s greener future:

“From a sustainability point of view what this signals, I think, is that we’re trying to provide consumers with relevant information that we know they’re very interested in. You can expect a pretty consistent drumbeat of things coming from GM on the sustainability front.”

Questions? Opinions? Curious about the sticker? Let us know in the comments, below.

Source: Business Green | Image: Chevy

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3. Berlin Police More Green Than Blue With New Electric Cars

This is a cross post from CleanTechnica.