By Chris Woodyard, USA Today - There's a little bit of irony in every Chevrolet Volt. The extended-range electric that saves oil is being made with a part that's composed of oil-soaked absorbent boom material from the Gulf of Mexico.General Motors bought enough leftover boom materials to make a year's worth of the air-deflecting baffles that go into the car.
"GM decided to offer assistance by collecting boom material from the Gulf coast until there was no longer a need," said John Bradburn, GM's manager of waste-reduction efforts. "We're in the process of identifying other areas where the material we have left can be used -- potentially in our plants -- now that we have a sufficient quantity for the Volt."
GM is using a lot of the leftover material, and it's going to lead to some big savings.
By using 227 miles of the leftover material from the booms for the Volt parts, GM hopes to save 29,000 gallons of absorbed water and oil by recycling it and to eliminate 212,500 pounds of waste that otherwise would have gone into a landfill. The Volt is the perfect place for it, one of the first plug-in cars from a major brand that can run 25 miles on electric power before the motor recharges the car.
The air deflectors are made of 25% of the boom material and have another 25% recycled tires. The rest are plastic both virgin and recycled.
GM says that before it came along, contaminated boom material was thrown away or burned.
In 2010, GM facilities worldwide recycled 92% of the waste they generated. It uses recycled and bio-based materials such as platcis bottles, blue jeans, carpet, cardboard, tires, kenaf fibers, balsa wood and soy in its vehicles.
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