Plastic pollution. It’s been everywhere in the news this summer, from straw bans, to ocean waste. GM, aware of the current cultural climate, participated in the fight against plastic pollution during World Environment Day (WED).
This past June, GM employees worldwide participated in WED to make their workplaces and facilities more environmentally friendly. Seventy-two manufacturing and non-manufacturing plants from 16 countries submitted more than 100 WED activities that reflected the reflecting the theme of beating plastic pollution.
GM held an internal competition among its facilities and named three winners for their creative and effective projects. The winning facilities included the Talegaon plant in Maharashtra, India; the São Caetano do Sul facility in São Paulo, Brazil; and the Silao facility located in Guanajuato, Mexico.
The Talegaon plant employees planted 100 trees, held a cleanliness drive, shared ideas to combat plastic pollution, and performed pollution-control checkups on some employee vehicles. About 50 employees volunteered over 100 hours to clean 840 pounds of waste in their local community.
The São Caetano do Sul facility held an awareness campaign by encouraging employees to create videos showing how their families tried to beat plastic pollution. Employees also had the opportunity to purchase eco-friendly items at a sustainable fair.
The Silao facility employees partook in ornamental plant adoption and removed hazardous workplace materials. The facility also hosted an annual fair centered around beating plastic pollution.
Overall, employees participated in 21 community cleanups, 32 environmental education-related activities and seven tree-planting events during WED, globally.
In America, GM has come up with various methods in fighting plastic pollution as well. This includes partnering with NextWave, adopting landfill free policies for its facilities, and recycling plastic for use in vehicles.
Comments
We should not forget that the sudden craze for plastic waste is related to China’s recent decision to no longer import plastic waste, of which China was taking about half of the global amount.
But the capitalistic economy with their for profit owners is still not moving towards a full recycling way of production, reusing at the molecular level all plastic products at their end of life.
GM should combat the cheap and hard plastics in their car’s interior…