The Coordinating Committee For Automotive Repair has announced the availability of a new training video from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the CCAR-GreenLink web site. The new training video, featuring NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon, is an outreach effort from the EPA's "Collision Repair Campaign," an effort to reduce auto body emissions at the national level based on recent EPA regulations applying to Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs) in collision shop paint operations, also known as the "Paint Rule."

"The EPA's new video is an informative and entertaining look into the national Paint Rule and how it will affect painting operations at collision shops in the near future," said Rod Enlow, CCAR Vice President of Industry Relations. "I encourage everyone in the auto body repair industry to take a look at the video and other resources cited on the CCAR-GreenLink site."

The video and additional information may be found at http://www.ccar-greenlink.org/paintrule.html.

America Recycles Day (ARD), November 15, is the only nationally-recognized day dedicated to encouraging Americans to recycle and to buy recycled products. Celebrating its 12th year, it has grown to include millions of Americans pledging to increase their recycling habits at home and work and to buy products made with recycled materials. Keep America Beautiful, Inc. (KAB) and the National Recycling Coalition (NRC) support local communities and raises awareness by educating citizens about the benefits of recycling through America Recycles Day. In conjunction with their local municipalities, volunteer ARD coordinators are positioned throughout the country and work to organize recycling awareness events in their schools and communities.

On November 15 each year, millions of people become better informed about the importance of daily recycling and buying recycled products. The purpose of America Recycles Day is to continue to promote the social, environmental and economic benefits of recycling and encourage more people to join the movement toward creating a better natural environment.

To learn more, visit the America Recycles Day web site.

After surpassing more than 4 million S/P2 (Safety and Pollution Prevention) online tests completed since the fall of 2006, CCAR administered a record number of S/P2 exams in the month of September.

With the influx of automotive students going through S/P2 courses at the beginning of the new school year, there were 477,476 exams completed last month. This represents the highest monthly total of tests recorded since S/P2 was introduced in 2002.

S/P2 provides effective, easy-to-use, affordable training on environmental and safety concerns to every employee and student in the automotive repair industry. Designed to help reduce injury, illness and environmental impact, the courses target more than three dozen specific issues concerning for three different industry segments: mechanical repair, collision repair, and heavy-duty fleet maintenance.

"We are grateful for the opportunity to assist automotive instructors across the country each year," said Daren Fristoe, CCAR President and Chief Operating Officer. "By raising the level of awareness in environmental and safety concerns among today's students, we hope to be a positive influence in the compliance performance of automotive repair operations in the years ahead."

For more information, visit www.sp2.org or call 1-888-772-3535.

Automotive Instructors: Now that your students have completed their fall S/P2 testing, we want to include a photo of them with their S/P2 Certificates of Completion in upcoming issues of this newsletter. You may attach a group photo of your students to an e-mail message and send it to newsletter@ccar-greenlink.org. Thank you!