Sustainable Materials

Materials are an important element of a vehicle's life-cycle sustainability. Choices about materials can influence the safety, fuel economy and performance of the vehicle itself and can also have implications throughout the value chain. A material can be more or less sustainable based on a number of factors, including its origin (virgin, renewable or reclaimed), the resources used and emissions produced throughout its life-cycle, and its application.

Ford has been working for many years to increase the use of recycled and renewable materials and reduce the use of undesirable materials. Vehicles in North America typically are composed of 20 to 25 percent post-consumer recycled material by weight, primarily due to the extensive use of metals with recycled content. Therefore, Ford has concentrated its efforts on developing new uses for recycled materials in the non-metallic portions of the vehicle, which are typically composed of virgin materials. While the amount of recycled content in each vehicle varies, we are continuously increasing the amount of recycled material used in each vehicle line. As described in the section on Design for Life-Cycle Sustainability, we use tools such as Design for Sustainability and life-cycle assessment and life-cycle costing to help make beneficial materials choices.

For many years, Ford has a had a Voluntary Recycled Content Usage Policy, which sets targets for the use of non-metallic recycled content for each vehicle and increases targets year by year. We are now developing a comprehensive sustainable materials strategy to maximize the effectiveness and broaden the implementation of our efforts in these areas. One of the key goals of this strategy is to identify and globally implement materials technologies that improve environmental and social performance and lower costs. To accomplish this, we are working with our commodity business planners and materials purchasers to communicate opportunities for the purchase of sustainable materials, develop and test pilot applications for new materials, and implement successful sustainable alternatives across multiple parts and vehicle lines. This process will standardize and broaden the use of sustainable materials in our vehicles. We are also developing global materials specifications, which will further facilitate the incorporation of sustainable materials where they meet performance requirements.

In 2008, for example, we developed a comprehensive resin strategy that requires the use of recycled plastics for all underbody and aerodynamics shields, fender liners and splash shields, stone pecking cuffs and radiator air deflector shields manufactured in North America. These parts will now be made out of post-consumer recycled waste from detergent bottles, tires and automotive battery casings. Many Ford vehicles already use recycled materials for these applications, including the Ford Flex, Focus, Fusion, Edge, Ranger, F-150 and Explorer; the Mercury Milan; and the Lincoln MKZ, MKX and Navigator. This recycled materials resin strategy will save money and reduce landfill waste. We estimate that Ford saved $4 to $5 million in 2008 by using these recycled materials and diverted between 25 and 30 million pounds of plastic from landfills.