Waste Management

In 2006, we began switching our data collection over to the European waste classification system, which is a good fit for our waste streams and will allow improved benchmarking and comparison. These enhancements are part of our overall Global Emissions Manager (GEM) database launch. Our data-collection process improvements will help our facilities continue to develop new methods of reducing and better managing waste. For example, based on GEM we can report that in North America in 2007, we generated 132 million kilograms of waste, or 46.4kg/vehicle produced. This includes 121 million kilograms of non-hazardous waste and 12 million kilograms of hazardous waste. This new system will allow us to report data on specific waste metrics for our North American facilities beginning in 2009, including data on hazardous and non-hazardous waste and the amount of waste disposed of by recycling, energy recovery and landfill. More extensive results will be published in future reports when year-over-year trend data are available.

We are committed to reducing waste at all of our facilities. For an example, please see the case study of our Kentucky Truck Plant paint process improvements.