Subaru is minimizing the footprint of its Outback wagons both while they are being built and when they are on the road.

The company's Lafayette, Indiana plant recycles 99 percent of the waste it generates, and the other 1 percent is sent to a waste-to-energy plant. That's an impressive achievement to which more auto companies should aspire.

The Outback emits the least air pollutants of any SUV, although other SUVs are rated higher by the EPA in greenhouse gas emissions. Subaru has teamed up with customer Interface, a company that manufacturers environmentally friendly floorings, to plant trees that will absorb C02 equal to the amount that each wagon they purchase will emit during its first 60,000 miles.

Actions such as planting trees or purchasing carbon offsets are well-intentioned, but in this case Subaru could do more by offering either a hybrid or diesel version of its vehicles. The company has intentions of producing diesel vehicles, but they are a bit late in jumping on the bandwagon.

Yesterday, Hertz Rent-A-Car announced their Green Collection, an offering of "fuel efficient, environmentally-friendly cars that are both easy on the wallet and suitable for families and small groups traveling together." Each car in the collection – including the Toyota Camary, Ford Fusion, Buick LaCrosse and Hyundai Sonata -- gets at least 28 MPG. Cars can be reserved at over 50 major US airports, and there are over 35,000 cars in the collection.

Now if Hertz would just stop tempting me with the kick-ass Hertz Shelby GT-H Mustang, I might actually be able to do the right thing.

The EPA has revised its guidelines for what it considers energy efficient computers, and Intel says it will follow the new Energy Star standard.

The EPA says the new standard will reduce energy use by 65 percent, saving $1.8 billion in energy costs over the next 5 years, and will reduce greenhouse gas emissions equal to that of 2.7 million cars.

If you think that PCs don't suck up most juice, you're wrong, as they consume 58 billion kWh per year, or about 2 percent of all electricity. If the government standardizes on Energy Star PCs as they replace their existing computers, they could knock off 2 billion pounds of emissions per year.

The new rules are going into effect on July 2007, and Intel says its new Core 2 Duo processors can be used in Energy Star PCs.

Hopefully PCs will enhance their sleep modes so that they can use just a trickle of power while not on, and be awoken for timed downloads or start the work day. I'd love for my desktop to automatically jump to attention just before I wake each day instead of wasting my time booting up and grabbing my email and RSS feeds.

Another electronics device that could use Energy Star efficiency is the growing category of DVRs like TiVo. I feel guilty that my box is always on at night (and noisy too), but I don't see a way to put it to sleep if there aren't going to be any shows recorded.I couldn't find any DVRs on the Energy Star website, but they are podcasting (how hip!) hints on reducing the electricity use of your electronics devices.