General Motors’ sustainability approach enables the company to serve its customers and shareholders, increase operational efficiency, mitigate risk and improve the communities where it does business. GM summarizes its impact in its annual sustainability report at www.gmsustainability.com.
The report outlines company aspirations, from mobility for everyone to advancing zero-emissions vehicles. Below are some near-term results.
•Innovating toward a lower-carbon future. GM produced 11 vehicle models around the world with some form of electrification, including the Chevrolet Bolt EV, which gets an EPA estimated 238 miles on a charge. Lightweighting helped improve customers’ fuel efficiency, with 10 vehicles losing a total of 3,600 pounds. The company’s Maven car-sharing service, now in 17 cities, features 100 Bolt EVs capable of covering 250,000 all-electric miles a month.
•Testing autonomous electric vehicles. GM drove more than 50 autonomous Bolt EV cars in San Francisco; Scottsdale, Arizona; and metro Detroit. The company believes autonomous vehicles will help reduce traffic fatalities and make transportation available to elderly people and people with disabilities.
•Making advanced safety technologies standard. The company offers 61 global models with forward collision alert, 58 with lane departure warning and 40 with side blind zone alert. More than half of the Chevrolet vehicles sold this year will feature GM’s Teen Driver system, which encourages safe driving.
•Building a clean-energy economy. GM used 199.8 megawatts of renewable energy in 2016, surpassing its 125MW commitment four years early. The company saves $5 million a year from these efforts. GM is working toward sourcing all electrical power for 350 facilities in 59 countries with renewable energy by 2050. Efficient manufacturing progress included reducing energy and carbon intensity by 16 percent and water intensity by 12 percent since 2010.
•Driving toward zero waste. The company added 23 new landfill free facilities last year. With 152 such sites worldwide, the company exceeded its 2020 landfill-free target. GM champions the Materials Marketplace, a reuse network where businesses can use a software program to buy one another’s scrap. The company reduced total waste by 27 percent since 2010.
•Serving and improving communities. GM employees contributed 110,000 hours of volunteering with 148 nonprofits in 2016. Each of the company’s 171 manufacturing plants engaged in an environmental outreach activity last year.
Published in the July 2017 Edition of American Recycler News