Subaru Car Manufacturing Goes Green

You know that can of garbage in your front yard that the waste hauler takes to a landfill every week? That can full of trash is more garbage than Subaru of Indiana Automotive (SIA) sends to a landfill every year.

Subaru calls it Corporate Social Responsibility, but it goes beyond anything any other auto manufacturer has accomplished. In 2002, over 800 acres of SIA property was designated a National Wildlife Federation Backyard Wildlife Habitat, a first bestowed upon an automotive manufacturing site. In 2002, SIA received the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14001 Recertification, the cornerstone of the environmental management awards, recognizable worldwide. Subaru’s marketing campaign has been Think, Feel, Drive, but inside SIA their campaign is Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Denise Coogan, manager of Safety & Environmental Compliance at SIA, took us through some of the reduction projects that include a 79 percent reduction in solvents, a 61 percent reduction in sludge, and a 6,000 gallon annual reduction in oil. These numbers allow Subaru to reduce its Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) by 40 percent.

The reuse projects are just as impressive. The 33,000 brass lug nuts that Subaru used to throw away now go back to the manufacturer and Subaru gets a small discount because of it. Over 35,000 gallons of solvent are reused annually, along with 34 million pounds of packaging material. A solvent recovery system and sludge dryer were the most capital intensive, taking about 7-10 years to recover the expense. All of this has helped Subaru achieve a 99 percent recycling rate. It’s simple things that help accomplish this, such as chipping up 378,000 pounds of wood pallets and using them around the almost 35,000 trees on the plant grounds.

Terry Jacot of Allegiant Global Services helped Subaru achieve zero percent landfill in less than two years. In a plant tour, Jacot showed us the Styrofoam pieces that are marked and crated to be sent back to Japan. They mark the pieces and try to get five trips out of each piece. Oil caps that are in the oil plugs are pulled out and sent back. Each piece of refuse is looked at and considered whether it will be used in its original form or in a secondary form, such as tires that are grated and used in children’s playgrounds.

Even with all the reducing, reusing, and recycling there is a small amount of leftover waste. Subaru could take that to the landfill and still have hero status, but instead it pays to have the waste taken to Covanta Energy, where Covanta extracts energy from the waste. The waste creates steam, which is turned into electricity. That’s right...Subaru pays Covanta to create electricity for the city of Indianapolis. Covanta processes approximately 15 million tons – about 5 percent – of the county’s waste annually and produces nearly 10 percent of the nation’s renewable energy. In fact, EPA concluded in 2003 that WTE produces electricity with less environmental impact than almost any other source of electricity.

SIA has looked at solar and wind for electricity and has worked with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program. Fuji heavy Industries, SIA’s parent company, has a division that specializes in wind power generation and SIA is looking at using that.

Toyota started building its Camry model in the SIA plant in 2007 and will manufacture up to 100,000 when at capacity. Toyota is already environmentally conscious, but they will learn more from Subaru.