The Ford Motor Company recently announced that its Oakville, Ontario, assembly plant had succeeded in achieving the zero waste-to-landfill designation. This success now makes the global automotive maker completely free of its reliance on landfills for waste disposal at all Canadian manufacturing locations.

The Oakville location is Ford’s largest Canadian facility with nearly five and a half million square feet. As a result of going landfill free, the plant recycled nearly two thousand metric tons of wood, paper, cardboard, and plastic that were generated as a result of vehicle assembly as well as office and management use. This saved more than five thousand cubic meters of space in landfills and over thirty two million liters of water.

With the zero waste success at the Oakville facility, Ford can now claim it has twenty one facilities around the world that have attained zero waste-to-landfill designation. Ford is on schedule for achieving its strategic waste management target of reducing landfill waste disposal by forty percent per vehicle produced. This is Ford’s second strategic waste recycling goal; between 2007 and 2011 the company launched it’s first waste recycling plan and was successful in reducing waste by forty percent per vehicle during that time.

WasteCare Wants You to Remember: Regardless of the size or business sector of your company, if you’re looking to cut waste disposal costs and support environmentally-forward practices in your community, developing a plan to increase waste recycling is the way to go. Start small, monitor your progress, and increase recycling initiatives and incentives over a pre-determined schedule. In time, you may discover that your business can claim “landfill free” status by making different choices about how to best recycle and re-use the waste you generate.