Well now, I too would like to know how any manufacturing firm can have “zero landfill waste.”

They can do it because a manufacturing facility is pretty much a closed system with identified waste streams. My guess is that the only waste stream that’s tough to recycle is the food waste from the employee lunch rooms.

I hate to use the argument from authority, but I actually have some credentials in the field of waste management, having been the waste mgmt coordinator for a large DuPont paint lab. As I said, the waste streams are identified, and if they can’t be recycled, they can be disposed of in an environmentally benign way.

Landfills are pretty much for solid waste. At the lab where I worked, we recycled paper, cardboard, steel, aluminum, plastic (we went through lots of paint can’s, and spray test panels, both metal and plastic), and wash solvent (we had a large industrial still on site). Solventborne paint waste went to incinerators where its BTU content could be used to generate energy. Waterborne paint waste was incinerated in cement kilns, about the only thing that gets hot enough to burn what is essentially water. The only stuff that ended up in the dumpsters was solid waste like wipers and paper cups and break room trash. Most of the solid waste was compacted to reduce landfill use. If we’d wanted to spend the money, we could have had it incinerated too and said we were landfill free.

Whether it’s the actual manufacturing process, or the leftover plastic and foil wrappers from the employee break rooms, SOME PART OF THAT FACTORY WILL ALWAYS PRODUCE THINGS THAT CANNOT BE RECYCLED.

“leftover plastic”? Sprues, flash or cuttings from molded parts can be reground and remolded, depending on the polymer involved. What can’t be reground can be reprocessed into other chemicals. Global Resource Corp. makes microwave based reactors that recycle a wide variety of waste streams into natural gas and petrochemicals.

Like I said, what can’t be recycled can usually be incinerated or deep well injected.

I’ll give credit were credit is due, but I also admire a company that recognizes where its weak areas are and where it needs to focus its increasingly spare resources in order to strengthen itself. I’m not sure that converting existing factories to zero landfill is going to help GM recover from its current situation. Is this where they would determine their share of the $50b Government technology investment should go? Or would they use it for product development to strengthen their bottom line?

GM should be an automotive engineering and manufacturing company first, and an environmental engineering company second. Bottom line is that overflowing, stinking, rat-infested landfills really shouldn’t be GM’s concern at the moment.

But kudos anyway.

There is more to life than money, something those who focus on growing the economy do not understand.

If I check a book out from the library, read it and return it; I have gotten the full value of the experience. However, if I instead buy the same book, never read it and then throw it away, I’ve gained nothing. Scenario 1 doesn’t “grow the economy” nearly as much as scenario 2 does. That doesn’t, however, make scenario 2 superior.

Maximizing the number of dollars changing hands does not ipso facto maximize the quality of life. If it did, there would be no satisfaction in voluntarily helping out family, friends, neighbors or even strangers … yet those activities are typically reported by honest people as being far more rewarding than a day spent at most jobs.

If it doesn’t add to the bottom line, it’s foolish. In most factory environments, it makes sense to recycle, due to appropriate volumes.

For individuals sorting home waste, it doesn’t make sense to surrendervalue your labor so cheaply (for most people – unless your municipality has effective civil & criminal sanctions).

Individual recycling is like a 30MPH national speed limit. Landfill space is cheap in North America. Your weekly minutes spent sorting trash is effort better spent growing the economy. In ~100 years, smart, cheap robots will sort trash.

Regarding incineration: While burning for energy generation is better than a landfill, more overall energy is saved by recycling the waste into new products than is created by the burning/electrical generation.

And those will be burned for energy production.

As the original blog entry said:

“GM’s plant trash will be recycled, sold for scrap or incinerated.”

Were we allowed to burn our small amounts of non-recyclable waste products; our household could skip the weekly trash pickup as well.

As far as the use of the term “elitist” as a political pejorative, what can I say. Anyone who is well educated and/or thoughtful in their views, choices and behaviors is being called an elitist. If you question the societal value of globalization and it’s effect on the blue collar working class then you are likely to be tarred and feathered as an elitist … by said same blue collar workers. If you ask what the logic is in burning excessive fuel to commute in monster trucks instead of reasonable sized vehicles … watch out, you may be an elitist! In fact, any appeal to reason over the raw emotion of “faith” is a sure sign of elitist tenancies.

All that said, I’m glad that GM and other manufacturers are pushing toward zero waste product production. It makes sense economically and environmentally. I hope they are making as large an effort in the new GM China factories.

What kind of comments would an objective commentary on land-fill free plants from, oh lets just say Toyota or Honda, generate from the best and brightest?

Hmmmmmmmmmmm……………….

People, chinar is right, give credit when it is due. Don’t when its not.

Credit is due in this case, unless of course, you’re a fan of overflowing, stinking, rat-infested landfills.

Geotpf: “I’m suddenly reminded of Atari burying millions of unsold Atari 2600 systems and cartridges for the system (especially ET) in a New Mexico landfill in the mid-1980’s.”

Or the same fate which befell remaining, unsold Apple Lisa computers in a Utah landfill in 1989.

My American Heritage Dictionary defines Elitist as, “The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority, as in intellect, social status, or financial resources.” The favored treatment often results in these certain persons looking down on anybody who is not in this area of exclusivity.

There is a difference between being the best at what you do based upon your body of work, and being in an exclusive group who sees everybody else as not worthy of even breathing the same air as them. This is the kind of elitism that people find distasteful.

Green Berets are an elite group, but to my knowledge, they don’t look down upon fellow soldiers who aren’t one of them.

Will we be seeing more of your input from across the pond? If so, I look forward to a review or two.

charliej5:

Just my $.02, but I think the term elitest took on a negative connotation implying that elitests this they are better human beings than others. The ‘Elite’ have become synonomous with the ruling class in an oligarchy.

Most of my more, particular, friends consider being an elitest a positive description. The non-elite dislike being described as the pedestrian public they are.

That said, I’m with you, when there’s a “best”, there’s a “rest”. The rest will consider those that like the best elitest. It is what it is, I guess.

Along with the landfill news, there is the Consumer reports news about Hybrids and which ones are more cost effective than others. The Tahoe is actually more cost effective than a Toyota Pious??!??

Saturn Vue tops the list with $4550 in 5 year savings.

GM has three in the top 6.

Doing something right…

(1) Perhaps they are sneaking out the garbage in the trunks of the new cars? When you buy a car, you have to promise not to open the trunk for 30 days. Gosh, they could cram trash in the doors, under the seats, all sorts of places.

(2) Perhaps their cars ARE the junk! :-)

(3) And 3rd, this might be the ultimate spin control on closing 50% of their plants. A closed factory makes no waste.

Most of us Americans do not do nearly as much as large corporations do to be “Green”.

Reminds me of the Penn and Teller show (Bull****!) on recycling (google it). As a joke, they gave several homeowners about ten different colored trash cans to separate their trash into. One woman who couldn’t even figure out what went in which trash can was actually okay with it. LOL

Being green these days has become an elitist buzz word that you care more and therefore are a better person then your non-recycling neighbor. I see it in my own neighborhood in fact.

Read more than you ever wanted to know about differences in formal and notional agreement between American and British English. Basically, Brits think of collective nouns as plural, and Yanks think of them as singular.

It’s impossible to do, I say. Every time we make something, there will ALWAYS be a certain amount of waste that simply cannot be recycled or reused.

Whether it’s the actual manufacturing process, or the leftover plastic and foil wrappers from the employee break rooms, SOME PART OF THAT FACTORY WILL ALWAYS PRODUCE THINGS THAT CANNOT BE RECYCLED.

Unless somehow GM has figured out how to shunt landfill waste to the books of its suppliers. Or maybe they sell/donate/ unusable byproducts to another company, who’s service is to “quietly dispose” of it in a landfill? Don’t ask, don’t tell, anybody?

It’s admirable to try, but I don’t think we can ever get there 100%.

I say it’s impossible without cheating on the spirit of it, so even if it’s Toyota or Honda making the claim, I hereby call bullshit on this whole notion of “zero landfill waste.”

This is commendable although it may just be more smoke and mirrors to get federal money and many of those plants will be closed, therby achieving zero landfill