Dive summary:
- Honda has announced that they have officially reached zero waste status at 10 of their 14 facilities in the United States, with the remaining four being “virtually zero” waste.
- In 2001 Honda officials evaluated each facility to find what was being thrown out, now policies have been put in place at every facility implement recycling or waste to energy recovery.
- The company has seen drastic results in the past ten years, in 2001 each automobile produced resulted in 62.8 pounds of waste where as now only 1.8 pounds of waste is produced from every car.
From the article:
Since the establishment of zero-waste-to-landfill production in its Alabama plant in 2001, Honda has undertaken a major initiative at plants throughout the region to eliminate landfill waste. To understand what comprised each plant’s landfill waste, Honda associates went “Dumpster diving,” looking at the composition of the waste material resulting from all of its production activities.
On the basis of these findings and subsequent investigations, Honda associates at all 14 plants in North America have identified and implemented hundreds of waste-reduction and waste-recycling initiatives.
These initiatives run the gamut, from the reduction of offal (metal scrap) in stamping processes, to improved parts packaging for ease of recycling, to the minimization of paper and plastic waste from cafeterias. ...
