Great news via GM: “Ten years ago GM reached a significant milestone in our waste reduction journey when our Flint Engine plant in Michigan became landfill-free. With 122 such facilities under our belt now, we now aspire to send zero of our manufacturing waste to landfills. We produce vehicles in 30 countries, so this commitment translates to significant scale. To put it in perspective, if you put the amount of waste we recycled and reused just last year into the beds of Chevrolet Silverado pickups and parked them end-to-end, they would stretch around the world. We try not to let our waste go to waste by sitting idly in a county landfill; we’re committed to finding more creative homes for it. And these efforts help curb climate change. This recycled material – 2.5 million metric tons, to be exact – avoided more than 10 million metric tons of CO₂-equivalent emissions. That more than offsets our company’s worldwide manufacturing emissions. Right now our landfill-free count represents a little more than half of our manufacturing operations. Meeting our stretch goal won’t be easy and it won’t happen overnight. From regional recycling infrastructure to local regulations, we encounter many challenges. Despite that, many sites are pretty close. Our average global recycling rate at our manufacturing plants is 85 percent…”

• See also the GM 2014 Sustainability Report