Environmental Leader

General Motors announced  it is planning to make half of its major global manufacturing operations landfill-free by the end of 2010. This means more than 80 of the company’s manufacturing operations will become landfill-free over the next 28 months.

At GM’s zero landfill plants, over 96 percent of waste materials are recycled or reused, and more than three percent is converted to energy at waste-to-energy facilities. On a worldwide basis, GM plants are expected to recycle or reuse over 3 million tons of waste materials. An additional 50,000 tons will be converted to energy at waste-to-energy facilities.

As a result of the company’s global recycling efforts, recycled metal scrap sales are approaching $1 billion in annual revenue. In North America, GM expects to generate about $16 million in revenue from the sale of recycled cardboard, wood, oil, plastic and other recycled materials.

Waste elimination and recycling efforts at GM’s landfill-free plants and other facilities are expected to offset 3.65 million metric tons of CO2 emissions.

GM also announced that 33 of its global operations have recently reached landfill-free status, bringing the company’s current total number of landfill-free manufacturing operations to 43.

Last year GM’s Baltimore transmission plant became the eighth GM facility to be tagged as landfill-free.