Today is Earth Day – April 22, 2022 – and even though Volkswagen is adding electric vehicles to its product mix, don’t bother shopping online for a VW today.
That’s because Volkswagen Canada is shutting down its consumer site in honour of Earth Day. Instead, today you’ll get a page with a coded image of the ID.Buzz electric van. Go the site and stay on the page for at least two seconds and your visit will be added to a “tree counter.”
Wherever the counter gets by the end of Earth Day, Volkswagen Canada will plant that number of trees, up to its goal of 100,000 of them.
The company said that while websites are crucial to consumers on their journey to an automobile purchase, that combined online activity – including web sites, searches, and video streaming – is responsible for about 4 per cent of all global CO2 emissions. As part of its “Be the Change” initiative, Volkswagen Canada is temporarily powering down its full website today in order to raise awareness of sustainability efforts. Today’s scaled-down site generates up to 93 per cent fewer CO2 emissions than a standard website would.
The tree initiative is run through a partnership with One Tree Planted, a global organization that focuses on reforestation, which will plant one tree in Canada for every visitor to the VW Canada site today. Globally, Volkswagen has pledged to become carbon-neutral by 2050.
Keyword: VW Canada shuts down its consumer site for Earth Day