GM announced in September that the company is committed to making half of their global manufacturing plants landfill-free by 2010. Two plants in Flint, MI have already achieved this status: Flint Engine South and Flint Tool and Die.
So what does being landfill-free mean? It means that all of the plant’s production waste and garbage is recycled or reused.
In GM Plants worldwide this year over 3 million tons of waste materials will be recycled or reused. Scrap metal, wood, cardboard, plastic and oil and all being recycled or reused. GM even found a way to make more money from being green (of course they did), sales from annual scrap metal recycling alone is close to $1 billion a year (that should make up for the cars they aren’t selling).
Flint native, John Bradburn, is GM’s staff environmental engineer. He’s the one in charge of finding eco-friendly solutions for the waste created through manufacturing. He is the one looking for and creating new uses for things instead of sending them to the landfill. He’s got his work cut out for him with eighty plants to go before the end of 2010.
I wonder though, if GM wants to be green so bad, why are they only implementing this in 50% of their plants? Why not all of them? It seems in the end they make money from it by selling recyclable materials. Why not go completely green? I also haven’t heard anything about the corporate offices, are they going green too? Or are the execs too good to be green? Hmm.
I’m just glad two plants in Flint are already landfill free. Seems we were the first on the map, of course the environmental engineer is from Flint and Chevy’s hybrid Volt is going to be partially made here. Looks like Flint may have a chance at being green after all.
