Subaru Plans to Convert One of its Vacant Car Plants into a Wildlife Habitat

You've seen the commercials. The deer in the field. Squirrels playing in the trees. Then the camera pans to show a manufacturing plant. Subaru. A car company taking conservation to a whole new level.

The Subaru plant in Lafayette, Indiana (SIA) has less trash than an average American home. Why? They went green.

Steven Balogh, of groovygreen.com, reported in an article that for the last three years, SIA has no landfill waste. Zero, zilch, nadda. He went on to report, "Eliminate environmental risks of our operations" is Subaru's motto.

Balohg said that a team from Groovy Green was able to tour the plant. What they found was impressive, to say the least. The normal recycling bins are there for the employees. At every work station. SIA has even incorporated recycling efforts into the employee reviews each year, according to Balohg.

SIA is the first plant that reuses and recycles everything. The plant incinerates the .07% that is left, in nearby Indianapolis, to generate steam.

Subaru uses the three "R"'s of recycling. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. This idea came from the bottom up. Subaru employees started making suggestions for reusing and recycling certain things that the plant uses everyday.

An example of what they have come up with is how they reuse the styrofoam some of the delicate parts are shipped in. The Subaru plant ships the styrofoam back to the vendor who reuses them no less than five times.

The report by Balogh, quoted Denise Coogan, Manager of Safety & Environmental Compliance. "We expect even the more capital intense recycling efforts to pay for themselves in seven years." Some of the efforts cost nothing to implement. Others have required the company to put up a substantial investment. The report uses the sludge recycling from the paint department and solvent recovery as two of the programs that had a large initial start-up cost.

In a press release by Subaru, Lou Ann Hammond reported that in 2002 Subaru's 832 acre automotive plant in Indiana was designated a National Wildlife Habitat.

Hammond gave some examples of the conservation efforts that the plant is using. The pallets are chipped and used as mulch around the grounds. They pull out the caps that are in the oil plugs and send them back. Everything is looked at to see what it can be used for.

Hammond reported that SIA's senior vice president, Tom Easterday announced the plant looking into solar wind energy to generate it's electricity.

Both articles mention the word "Kaizen". Both define it as ongoing improvement. Subaru is making great strides in this. They intend to keep improving not only the vehicles they produce, but the environment in which they are manufactured.