GM Plant Eliminates Waste, Goes Landfill-Free

General Motors’ Baltimore transmission plant has reached zero landfill status. The plant is the eighth GM facility to be tagged as landfill-free.  

The GM Powertrain Baltimore plant will be the exclusive manufacturer of GM’s all-new two-mode hybrid transmission. GM says that the hybrid technology will increase the fuel efficiency of GM’s full-size SUVs and pickups up to 25 percent over conventional gasoline Powertrain systems.

This year, approximately 97 percent of the waste materials from the site (7,300 tons) will be recycled or reused and three percent (215 tons) will be converted to energy at a waste-to-energy facility. Items that are recycled or reused at the site this year will include approximately 510 tons of aluminum, 600 tons of steel, 10 tons of alloy metals, 360 tons of wood pallets, 3 tons of paper, 20 tons in empty totes and drums, 250 tons of used oil, 220 tons waste water residual, and 5,400 tons of returnable packaging.

Other GM landfill-free facilities include plants in Tonawanda, NY; Flint and Wixom, Mich.; Gunsan and Bupyeong, Korea; and Kaiserslautern and Eisenach, Germany.

In other GM news today, AP reports that the company has agreed to pay a $75,000 fine for failing to meet deadlines for cleaning up contaminated property formerly owned by the automaker in Sioux City.