General Motors (GM) recently announced that it is ramping up its waste diversion goals and now generates $1 billion a year from the reuse and recycling of byproducts the company generates at its manufacturing plants. With the massive impact a company such as GM has because of the size and scope of its operations as well as supply chain, the company’s recent achievements and future goals are an important step for other automakers to emulate. After all, while automobiles are among the United States’ most recycled products, with as much as 75 percent of their content reprocessed and reused, more improvements during the manufacturing phase could benefit more businesses, and of course, the environment. Considering all the plastic and other materials that end up in the interiors of cars, improvement on this front would help a revitalized industry become even more efficient.
Currently GM recycles about 90 percent of its manufacturing waste. At the moment 102 of the company’s facilities are zero-waste; GM has a goal to increase that amount to 125 globally by 2020. The results have been a bevy of creative programs, from Gulf of Mexico oil boom that GM and a supplier churned into car parts to winter coats manufactured out of a sound-absorption material.