At Clean Plants, It's Waste Not

A new emphasis on reducing garbage results in factories that produce less trash than you do at home each week. And it's good for business, too. By Dan Orzech. August 10, 2005

Each week, hundreds of new cars1 roll out of the Subaru factory in Lafayette, Indiana. What doesn't come out of the plant is garbage. When the garbage truck rolls up to the curb in front of your house each week, it hauls away more trash than is generated by the manufacturing processes at the factory.

Subaru is not alone. Lots of other companies are shipping far less garbage to landfills than they did even a few years ago. Cascade Engineering, a Grand Rapids, Michigan, plastics manufacturer that makes parts for cars and various plastic containers -- including trash cans -- has cut the amount of trash it sends to landfills from 2,475 tons in 2003 to just over 700 tons this year. "We've gone from every-other-day pickups to once every couple of weeks," says Kelley Losey, an environmental services manager at the company. ...

Source: Wired News