Greener Manufacturing at General Motors

Our Environmental Principles form the foundation for our manufacturing practices and each of our facilities tracks and reports its annual performance on energy use, water use, greenhouse gas emissions and waste. Our commitment to improvement and the innovative practices we’ve employed have helped us to make great strides in these areas.

Energy – GM is one of the leading users of renewable energy in the manufacturing sector. We use energy from solar, hydro and landfill gas resources. And around the globe we have reduced our overall energy usage globally by more than 40 percent between 2005 and 2009. The amount of energy we’ve saved from these reductions is enough to heat and power 1,300,000 homes.

Emissions – By saving energy and increasing the use of renewable energy sources, we have reduced CO2 emissions from our facilities by 39 percent from 2005 to 2009.

Water – Between 2005 and 2009, we reduced the amount of water used by our worldwide facilities by nearly 35 percent.

Waste – To reduce the waste coming out of our facilities, we focus first on decreasing the amount of waste that is generated by our manufacturing processes to begin with. Then, for waste that cannot be avoided, we work hard to find ways to recycle those materials for use in new products – either in our vehicles or in other consumer products. We currently have 76 facilities around the world which have earned a “landfill-free” certification. This means that these facilities send no waste to landfills – it is either recycled or used to create energy. We have exceeded our goal for 2010 to have more than half our facilities landfill-free certified.

  Source: www.gm.com