In trying to find ways to help the environment, GM announced that they will recycle the oil soaked Boom from the BR oil spill. The Boom for all who don't know (myself included) is a protective layer of a plastic type resin laid across a 100 mile stretch of the Alabama and Louisiana coastline meant to shield the marshes and other habitats from the encroaching oil that resulted from the BP oil spill.
The boom will be processed to remove the oil and then shipped to Indiana where it will be recycled into more than 100,000 pounds of plastic resin pellets. The pellets will then be used in molds to produce a part that protect the GM Volt's radiator. The Chevrolet Volt is one of GM's electric vehicles. This is one of the ways that GM is looking to increase their "clean and green" image in the coming years. A trend many manufacturers will follow for sure.
"This was purely a matter of helping out," said John Bradburn, manager of GM's waste-reduction efforts. "If sent to a landfill, these materials would have taken hundreds of years to begin to break down, and we didn't want to see the spill further impact the environment," he added.
GM said they try to recycle materials at every stage of their product life-cycle, integrating those materials into roughly 90 percent of the vehicles they produce. This is surely a great way for a company in an industry that uses oil to help out. I can see this happening more and more as different companies get involved. That is one thing that I have to compliment America on. No matter our faults as a society, when tragedy's occur we usually find a way to pull together and help rectify the situation. This is yet another example of that. I don 't own a GM vehicle, but something like this would definitely play into my decision to buy one. Good goin GM!
