GM’s Clean-Streams Dream Team Adds Dealer to Roster

Last week we welcomed our first dealership to the GM Global Rivers Environmental Education Network, the next chapter in the 26-year story of GM GREEN.

GM GREEN, the longest-running conservation education program by any automaker, encourages community engagement by helping youth better understand their impact on local watersheds. Each year we match more than 10,000 students with GM mentors to retrieve water samples, test and analyze them, identify an issue of concern, and channel their findings into a sustainable action plan addressing local water quality issues.

For a quarter of a century, our employees have partnered with the nonprofit Earth Force and local schools and conservation groups in 42 GM plant communities to mentor students in environmental science. GM GREEN continues to grow. In 2014 we expanded the program to seven new facilities in Canada and reached a new milestone: all our U.S. and Canadian manufacturing plants now participate in the initiative.

But we’re always looking for ways to improve the program. So what’s next? We plan to spread the impact beyond just GM plant cities to every community where we sell vehicles by engaging our dealer network.  

Employees from Ingersoll Auto of Danbury in Connecticut mentored students from Reed Intermediate School in nearby Newtown last week as they conducted water quality testing in local streams.

“Participating in GM GREEN was a great experience and an opportunity to leave a lasting, positive impact on our community, our watershed and, most importantly, our local youth,” said Todd Ingersoll, owner of Ingersoll Auto.

Our dealer partners are committed to improving the communities where they live and work. GM GREEN provides another avenue for them to continue that great work and engage in sustainability-focused community outreach, one criteria to earning recognition through our Green Dealer Program launched earlier this year.