Honda declared that it has succeeded in meeting a significant target of its Green Factory or ‘zero-waste-to-landfill’ program in North America.
Associates at Honda Manufacturing of Alabama in Lincoln, Ala., inspect body side panels for the new 2011 Odyssey.
Among its 14 production facilities in North America, 10 are now functioning with zero waste to landfill whilst its other four plants operate with ‘virtually zero-waste to landfill’. The company which was sending around 62.8 pounds of factory waste material per automobile manufactured to landfill in 2001 is expected to reduce it to a mere 1.8 pounds in 2012. The company presently transports less than one-half of 1% of all its functional wastes to landfills. The residual waste products are either used for energy recovery or recycled.
As a part of its program the company performed ‘Dumpster diving’ to check and identify the type of waste materials generated from all its activities. On identification of the waste products, Honda introduced waste-recycling and waste-reduction initiatives in all its 14 plants in North America. The process identified ways to cut down the level of metal scrap in the stamping process, bettered the packaging process to assist easy recycling and brought down the plastic and paper cup wastage in its cafeterias. It is estimated that the initiatives of the company has stopped around 4.4 billion pounds of waste products from reaching the landfills. The company utilized its programs such as ‘NH Circle’ in its recycling and waste reduction activities.
It introduced initiative to re-use the left over sand of its metal casting operations, completely stopped steel scraps from reaching landfills, recycled the aluminum scrap for the use in die-cast functions, recycled over 22 tons of steel received in the form of bolts, unused fasteners and other packaging parts and stopped over 500 metric of cafeteria waste. Presently Honda factories send only food waste, plastic and paper from its cafeterias and break rooms and a by product obtained during the paint pretreatment process for aluminum panels to land fills. It is taking an effort with the EPA to find viable methods for the effective disposal of the paint by product.