IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
The Toro Co. in Riverside has partnered with a non-profit foundation that is conducting a nationwide water conservation program.
My Water Pledge is a competition between cities across the United States that is being held during the month of April, said Steve Creech, executive director of the Wyland Foundation, an environmental non-profit group and the project’s sponsor.
Mayors are urged to encourage their residents to make online pledges designed to save water, including taking shorter showers, cutting back on their landscape watering and using energy-saving appliances.
The website address is www.mywaterpledge.com.
The goal is to have saved more than 740 million gallons of water nationwide when the competition ends April 30. At that time, participants in cities that saved the most water will be eligible for prizes, including a new car.
Toro, whose Riverside office is the company’s irrigation division, is planning an event in Riverside that will commemorate that city’s participation in the foundation’s Mayor’s Pledge program.
It will also accompany Wyland officials as they tour local schools to talk about conservation, and will give water-saving devices to local residents who participated in the program, according to Toro officials.
“We’re trying to conserve water in a way that’s never been done before,” Creech said. “The idea is to target cities more than individuals, and to get people to conserve water by convincing them it’s the right thing to do. Conserving water is something we should do all the time, not just during a drought.”
The program started five years ago in south Florida. It worked so well there that the foundation – which is owned and operated by Wyland, the famous marine wildlife artist – decided to take the program national.
