You know where your coffee beans come from — so why not your gasoline? Did your $3.50 a gallon go to prop up our tar-sands-addicted frenemies in Canada? Perhaps that tank of gas was originally shipped out of Venezuela and is propping up Hugo Chavez.
We’re not exactly to the point where you can buy single-sourced, Fair-Trade-certified gasoline, but Equitable Origin is at least an attempt at moving us in that direction, reports FastCoExist.
[Founder David] Poritz says that he has worked with indigenous federations as well as companies in Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, and Peru on a process to rate oil companies on their practices throughout the petroleum extraction and production life cycle.
To make it possible to compare oil companies, Equitable Origin’s 23-year-old founder is working on the EO100 Standard.
The EO100 Standard does not specify required technologies to reduce environmental and social impact, but rather provides a rating system with which such impact is evaluated. The standard defines a minimum level of performance below which EO Certification will not be awarded. Above the minimum level of performance, a given production operation can earn extra qualifying points.
So it’s kind of like LEED certification (a standard for rating green buildings), but for gasoline. Whatever the result, you can bet the gas stations in Berkeley will be sure to carry only EO100 “certified” gasoline in short order. It’s the new organic!
