Manufacturing With Environmental Responsibility
By Gary L. Cowger
Group Vice President, Global Manufacturing and Labor Relations
Solar power. Landfill gas. Jatropha plants for biodiesel fuel.
Not exactly words one would expect to be part of the culture at an auto company, particularly General Motors.
But they are and I am proud to admit they form the basis for some far-reaching environmental initiatives.
As the person responsible for GM’s 185 manufacturing sites around the world, I have a vested interest in ensuring that our people not only produce the best vehicles, but that they do so in an environmentally responsible manner.
In fact, we measure ourselves on our environmental impact right down to the operators on the plant floor who assemble our final product. The environmental metric, along with our safety and quality metrics, is reinforced with every employee, in every plant, in every language around the world today.
And, as a result, our facilities, where appropriate, have adopted conservation initiatives that have reduced our global manufacturing energy demands by nearly 20 percent in the last five years.
That means our energy reduction efforts to date can be equated to the energy required to heat and power 700,000 homes. And from a financial standpoint, that means we have contributed almost a half billion dollars to the bottom line.
How we are accomplishing this requires a little explanation because we have found there is no single solution to reducing energy consumption and improving the environment.
These initiatives include using solar power and landfill gas to power plants or surrounding communities; finding ways to re-use scrap and waste that would otherwise be landfilled; and planting trees – or other essential plants – around our facilities or in threatened forests.
Recently, I was able to get up close and personal with one of these initiatives by helping workers plant trees and other vegetation outside our new assembly plant in Talegaon, India.
These plantings are not only essential to the ecosystem outside the plant, but one plant in particular – called jatropha – will serve double duty. Its seeds will be harvested and pressed to extract an oil that will be used to power diesel engines.
Elsewhere, our initiatives are benefiting our employees, facilities and communities.
Here are some other examples:
- We are generating solar power and sending it into the grid through the world’s largest rooftop solar power structure at our Zaragoza, Spain, assembly plant. We also have solar installations at two facilities in the U.S. and plans to bring a third one on line.
- A few weeks ago, I announced that 43 of our facilities are now landfill free, meaning that all waste from these facilities will be recycled, reused or converted to energy. We expect half our operations to be landfill free in the next two years.
- Our Lansing Delta Township facility in Michigan is a model of integrating a manufacturing plant into the surrounding environment. In fact, this facility is Gold LEED certified, the only automotive manufacturing facility in the world with that designation.
- We have designated more than 870 acres in North America as habitat enhancement and restoration projects to provide food, water and homes for wildlife.
- GM has helped establish a 30,000-acre Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest Project. To date, 316,805 trees have been planted on approximately 438 acres of existing rainforest.
All of these efforts are having a tangible effect on our business and the environment.
Going forward, these initiatives equal the reduction of almost 4.5 million metric tons of CO2 a year. This is the equivalent to the CO2 which is released by producing energy for nearly 400,000 houses a year.
Of course, I know we can do better and our employees, suppliers and other partners are working hard to build on these successes.
And their efforts fit perfectly with what we are doing to reinvent GM and the automobile for the next century. We have every intention to be around for another hundred years. And we have every intention to be a leader in design, fuel economy, performance and environmental sustainability.
- Posted in Business, Cars & Trucks
James N.
This is exactly what needs to be advertised. Everyone knows about GM’s cars and trucks. They need to see what other steps GM is taking to improve the enviroment. You also need to advertise GM’s hybrid city buses and the positive impact that they make. GM is passing up on a huge boost by not advertising this in main stream media.
Chris (Toronto)
Gary said, “That means our energy reduction efforts to date can be equated to the energy required to heat and power 700,000 homes”.
This statement means nothing unless you specify a timeframe. Is this saying you have saved enough, to date, to power 700,000 homes for a week ? A month ? A year ? It is impossible to judge without this info.
Don’t me wrong, your efforts in this area are both needed and to be applauded. Keep it up.
Chris (Toronto)
Phil
Good Gary,
Now just do whatever it takes to get us US distribution of the Chevy Cruze
NEXT SEPTEMBER!!!
We need this car badly to keep the momentum going at Chevrolet…
Moreover, it’s excellent gas mileage will help the environment too.
A seperate fleet model with it’s own front/rear fascias, upholstery, and fleet badging
can be built when the Cobalt is phased out so volume can remain high without
effecting retail residuals, and dealers can’t try to resell them as normal used cars.
This would be a new paradigm which would be expanded to
all non-Cadillacs to bring market share back up to where it should be.
Please use your clout to cause these things to happen!!!
Gerard
I find GM’s commitment to cleaner industry welcoming, though not unusual in our day and age. I always hold caution about embracing corporate green activity. Bill Ford proudly boasted of his company having the cleanest work facility in the world. Ford’s problem? The company was flooding the market with now-worthless light trucks sucking down gas like liquor and pouring carbon compounds into Earth’s atmosphere. That outweighed Bill Ford’s environmental credit.
GM has to do more in the product picture. Folks who I would consider falling under Bob Lutz’s view on ecology, which does include some scientists, make a reasonable argument about the material expense put into developing a “green” car like the Toyota Prius. That is a fair one, completely. But building a cleaner, better product is the key step. Have the product be good (in this case, be clean), and improve the manufacturing methods as time goes on.
Anyone can say he or she will develop a clean car for the future. That’s what GM management said in the 1980s. Look at the EV1 debacle. The public perception was that the General blew a good opportunity and allowed Toyota to make another gain. The 2004 Prius came at the right time when gasoline prices were beginning their long jump. At around the same time, GM pushed ahead with the EV1 termination program. That was a PR disaster.
Push ahead with the Volt. Get the price down so it can sell. Corn ethanol is not the future, but it can be a stepping stone to the more promising concept of cellulosic ethanol. Instead of spreading expensive full-hybrid sport-utes and weak-performing mild-hybrid sedans, just utilize simpler production methods with standard gas-powered automobiles to make them more efficient and cheaply priced.
Tim
Gerard said:
“Bill Ford proudly boasted of his company having the cleanest work facility in the world. Ford’s problem? The company was flooding the market with now-worthless light trucks sucking down gas like liquor and pouring carbon compounds into Earth’s atmosphere. That outweighed Bill Ford’s environmental credit.”
No, it was consumers that bought those trucks. Ford (and GM) were only building what people wanted. It’s not the auto manufacturers that should be blamed for people buying trucks and SUV’s (and please don’t use the arguement about how they advertised. That’s like saying McDonalds is why American is fat. McD’s didn’t force you to eat there). If Ford and GM weren’t doing it and had Toyota gotten into the game earlier, I would bet my life savings Toyota would have been selling those “now-worthless light trucks sucking down gas like liquor and pouring carbon compounds into Earth’s atmosphere. ”
Don’t blame the automakers for comsumers actions.
On topic, I completely agree with James N. GM should have a few ads touting this stuff. Honda and Subaru do it and without competing ads, it appears that GM isn’t, when that is definately not the case.
Jimmy D
Gary,
I have two points to make: Promotion and motivation
I was aware of most of these initiatives. But I think I am unusual in that regard. I agree with the idea of promoting this, but I think the impact of such promotion would be greatest at a regional level. I really do not care that Spain gets solar panels (well not much), but I bet the Spanish folks are really interested. Likewise, while it is interesting to hear about it, the folks in India are the real benefactors of the biodiesel idea. All good stuff that people should be told about, but I think the best way is word of mouth on a local level. The people at and near these facilties need to tel the story.
Motivation
I have read GMs Vision, Objectives, and Operating Values. Usually these are just boilerplate, with nearly every company saying the same thing. I like that GM is putting some of these into action. I understand the motivation behind being environmental motivated is driven by a business reason: Long term Sustainability.
As a capitalist, I am ok with that, and I think others should be too. No one should be clouded with the idea that GM is being benevolent. There is direct motivation to these actions: Sustain the business. That means sustaining the communities that the business services and provides for and supporting the customers long term. It is synergistic relationship where one cannot survive without the other. In these cases it makes good business sense to take these actions.
Keep up the good work and makes sure folks know about what great things GM is capable of doing.
Raymond Joyal
I’ve been reading old Hot Rod magazines from the late 60’s and the GM ads in there were really interesting. In between the GTO and Chevelle SS ads were “generic” General Motors ads that talked about the new things GM was doing and how some day we’d have onboard Nav systems, how GM designed electronics were helping the Air Force, and so on. I agree with the other posters that some GM “bragging” about green-ness can’t hurt.
It’s perfectly acceptable to me that GM can sell Corvettes and still be environmentally friendly. I like cars, I accept the fact that car manufacturing and driving cause some pollution, but that doesn’t mean GM can’t try to make good, fast, safe cars and be environmentally conscious at the same time.
Ray
Gerard
In response to Tim’s comment:
I never mentioned consumers being forced into buying V-8 light trucks. People are responsible for what they do. I’m not an environmentalist, a Honda advocate, or a Naderite. Bill Ford promoted an environmentalist slogan, while building a massive volume of vehicles quite the opposite.
Ford, GM, and Chrysler dealers and manufacturers certainly didn’t have a demand for their full-size lineup in the past three years, since they had to shove huge discounts and finance benefits. To ignore the the large cuts on the sticker price is to invalidate common sense. When you have a $34,000 pickup being offered for $26,000, that will attract buyer interest. When you see a third of the price stripped off a product, you’re more likely to overlook its flaws and appreciate its qualities.
The point is that the Detroit Three were remaining dependent on a weakening auto segment, having to add more and more incentives, while maintaining high production levels. That has changed only recently. GM management has been the most vocal about adjusting to the market shift away from light trucks and back to passenger cars. Must every vehicle be “green”? That’d be dandy, but not realistic. I’m as interested a fast and sporty cars as any red-blooded male, but there is a difference between building fifty thousand high-performance vehicles and two million gas-guzzling trucks.
getalifeagain
Seems like GM is doing things governments should be doing.
Chris R
Jimmy D said “It is synergistic relationship where one cannot survive without the other.”
That would be simbiotic. Each relying on the other for survival. Synergistic is more like two groups having different, yet complimentary skill sets or talents.
That said, this is another area where GM needs to shamelessly self promote itself. Everyone needs to know that GM is doing things like this. Large stickers need to be displayed on and in every hybrid GM bus as well, so people know that GM hybrids are more common and have been around longer than they realized. GM has the marketing and advertising people in place, why don’t they put the proper spin on this kind of thing? If the current GM ad people aren’t getting it done, then perhaps it’s time for GM to go looking elsewhere. Maybe hold competitions between ad agencies for each campaign rather than just going with whatever lame thing the current agency comes up with.
Dan
GM is truly leading the industry in enviromental awareness and I think they deserve much more credit for it and I think since the Volt, it is helping.
http://www.ChevroletVolt.org - Volt fan/news site!
J. Stanton
I love cars, love GM…many 60s GM cars are on my dream list….I was dismayed with the poor decisions stretching over decades to have a product mix that didn’t fit the market.
And now, with the fuel and climate crises plain for all to see, I have to conclude that GM can NEVER be considered a responsible company as long as a global warming denier is running the show.
It is painful, but I have to say that I am done with having any hope for GM. I think Lutz only thinks the Volt is to appease a market segment.
Lutz is clueless. You have many, many miles to go before you convice the public that you do care.
The ground is shifting beneath your feet, and your market share is a disaster, and not improving.
No proof
Global warming is a fairy tale for the news media. There is no proof that CO2 does any harm, carbon cycles itself right back to the bottom of the ocean. Ozone forms continuously. There is no warming, there may actually be a cooling. A majority of published scientists disagree with global warming theory. All this hybid stuff is a sales gimmick, but that’s ok in a capitalist world.
Chris R
No proof, There is a climate change happening. The Earth cycles through these changes over thousands of years. The question is really “What impact, if any, is humanity having on those changes?” These natural changes are something we can’t stop. The Earth is going to go through them regardless of how we feel about it. We just need to be careful that we’re not doing anything that will make the changes more severe. As for hybrids, they’re a good step to moving away from gas and diesel. Especially a hybrid like the Volt, which can eventually use a fuel cell in place of it’s internal combustion engine, and the car may not need it’s battery pack at that point either. Oil is a limited resource, and auto makers, plastics companies and others really do need to be moving away from it. Heck, even some oil companies are starting to see that they can make money in other areas besides oil.
Jeremy. M
http://www.pickensplan.com/theplan/
This Web site is a must go to for all Americans.
Take action! GM has made vastly more NVGs than any other manufacturer but you won’t know that by going to Pickensplan.com .. Nope .. The Site features a Honda that I doubt has made more than a handful of the 7 million NVGs in use worldwide. The Pickensplan is about America / Honda ? Mr. Lutz and Pickens should have a talk … Please get a GM made Auto on the Pickens site.
Now about the actual application and marketing of NVGs. I know, I know.. you say were are people going to get Natural Gas, Chick’n and the Egg conundrum. Put in a gas pump at the dealer make that dealer a pleasant place to go and watch as customers drive hours out of there way each week and month to the Convenient truth that there part of the few Elite and committed to saving the rest of us from ourselves as they drive us into the future, a future that has NVGs.
Wendell Mercantile
“The site features a Honda that I doubt has made more than a handful of the 7 million NVGs in use worldwide. “
Although Honda is the only company offering a natural gas burning car to consumers in the United States. GM sells natural gas cars outside the U.S. but leaves the market here to Honda. Go figure.
Excellent idea of putting natural gas refueling stations at GM dealers. (Although it seems GM does not have enough clout over their dealers to require they do that.)
kevin
I applaud GM for their efforts to “green” manufacture their vehicles. However, they also need to force their suppliers into following suit. Getting a part cheap from a 3rd world country supplier at the expense of the environment is negating their own work & expense to clean up their operations. We need to hold the line on the effects if we are going to tout how great we are doing.
Jim Mbongo
Hi Bob,
With all of this financial mess, I hope GM will take this opportunity to use the 2-mode hybrid FWD in the upcoming Chevy Equinox and GMC Terrain..
WARREN
You guys have to somehow make the UAW to take pay cuts for the employees,if you are going to be able to make it.