At Clean Plants, It's Waste Not

At Clean Plants, It's Waste Not

Each week, hundreds of new cars 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.

The factory is the first auto assembly plant in North America to become completely waste-free: Last year, 100 percent of the waste steel, plastic and other materials coming out of the plant were reused or recycled. Paint sludge that used to be thrown away, for example, is now dried to a powder and shipped to a plastics manufacturer, ending up eventually as parking lot bumpers and guardrails. What can't be reused -- about 3 percent of the plant's trash -- is shipped off to Indianapolis and incinerated to generate electricity.