“GREEN” plants are growing in the motor industry. Companies are investing to give their factories green credentials to complement their products, reducing emissions and using more eco-friendly materials and processes.

Ford’s Dagenham diesel engine plant has wind turbines to generate energy that save 6,500 tonnes of CO2 a year from entering the atmosphere. Other eco-efficient processes at Dagenham prevent more than 12,600 tonnes of waste annually being sent to landfill sites.

In Sunderland Nissan’s factory will soon have eight wind turbines to generate 6 per cent of the plant’s energy requirement, cutting CO2 emissions by 4,000 tonnes a year at power stations supplying the factory with electricity. Unlike most wind farms, Nissan’s is enclosed within an industrial area on lowlying ground to minimise environmental impact.

As a manufacturer of environmentally focused hybrid cars, Honda takes automotive emissions reduction seriously, and targets for its Swindon plant include achieving zero waste to landfill sites by 2010.

The figure has already been cut from 60kg per car to less than 7kg. Honda is testing a wind turbine to assess the feasibility of generating up to 10 per cent of its energy needs.

Toyota, which markets the Prius hybrid, also has an active environmental efficiency programme at its Burnaston plant, which last year won a Business in the Community award for excellence in the Eco Efficiency category. The plant recycles 100,000 tonnes of waste water a year via a reverse osmosis facility. Waste from its paint shop is purified and used in its boilers.

At Cowley, Oxford, BMW’s MINI plant has introduced an integral paint process. Claimed as a “world first”, it eliminates the application of a primer, saves energy and reduces emissions in the paint shop by more than 3,500 tonnes a year. Since 2002, energy consumption at the plant has fallen 25 per cent per car produced, as have CO2 emissions. Water consumption is down 30 per cent per car, while waste recycling is up from 30 per cent to 70 per cent.

Jaguar has also made significant cuts in energy consumption, CO2 production (by almost 26 per cent between 2001 and 2005) solvent emissions (down more than 40 per cent) and water usage, also down more than 40 per cent. Using a rail system, it has drastically reduced the number of car deliveries by truck.

General Motors Manufacturing produces Vauxhall and Opel Astras at its Ellesmere Port plant, which has been recognised by the Energy Efficiency Accreditation Scheme, the UK benchmark for energy efficiency in industry. To get accreditation it had to maintain and improve energy management and encourage staff and the community to be energy aware. About 95 per cent of waste is recycled and, since 2000, energy use per car has been cut by 49 per cent.

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