General Motors of Canada recently announced a bit of environmental news in that it’s CAMI Assembly plant in Ingersoll, ON has achieved the distinction of being able to operate without needing to send any material whatsoever to landfill.
The 25 year old CAMI plant, is home to 3,000 employees and produces the Chevrolet Equinox and the GMC Terrain. Currently the plant produces more than 300,000 vehicles a year.
According to information supplied by General Motors, the CAMI plant is one of 11 new facilities to achieve this status globally and is now one of 122 facilities operated by General Motors world wide to be landfill-free, 89 of which are manufacturing. In Canada, the powertrain plant in St. Catharines, ON has operated landfill-free since 2008.
The addition of these 11 facilities to landfill-free status helps GM avoid more than 600,000 metric tons of CO2-equivalent emissions. This is comparable to the greenhouse gas benefit of 15 million tree seedlings grown for 10 years.
To achieve this status, a comprehensive strategy to minimize waste was instituted following the principles of reducing first, reusing second and recycling third. At present all but 5% of the materials and waste generated at CAMI can be addressed using the 3R’s. The remaining 5% is sent to an Energy From Waste (EFW) facility where it is incinerated and turned into residential energy. Efforts continue to reduce this amount, with the ultimate goal of being zero waste being diverted to an EFW facility.
To learn more about how the CAMI plant was able to achieve Landfill-free status, I travelled to Ingersoll, ON to visit the plant personally and get a first-hand understanding from the employees responsible for making the distinction possible. The following presents a video recap of what I found.
More on the overall environmental policy for General Motors can be found by visiting http://www.gm.com/environment
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