Toyota’s Green Productivity

The scope of Toyota’s green initiatives extends from its hybrid cars to its advocacy for eco-driving to its green productivity in car manufacturing. Green Productivity is an approach to improve efficiency and environmental performance for total socio-economic development. Tools, techniques, and technologies are applied to reduce the harmful impacts on the environment made by an organization’s operations.

Cars running on fuel are big pollutants; emitting large amounts of carbon that stay in the earth’s atmosphere and trapping heat in. The effects of global warming and climate change have prompted car manufacturers to come up with more environmentally-friendly cars in the form of hybrids and electric cars that use up less to zero fuel in order to run. However, the process of making a new car creates pollution too, so there is a driving need to make car manufacturing sustainable and earth-friendly as well.

Toyota Prius
Image Credit: Auto Blog Green

Toyota, in particular its plants in North America, have reported achievements in line with its program on environmental stewardship in all aspects of its production process, which includes logistics and sales.

Design-wise, eight of the company’s vehicles have bio-based plastics in their systems. In addition, the vehicles are designed to make the most of its end-of-life recycling. This means that when the vehicles have reached the end of their lifetime, their parts may be easily recycled. Making these vehicles are done in such a way that plants, particularly in North America, are able to reduce their greenhouse has emissions by 7%. In addition, ten factories in the United States were able to step up their green production cycle, achieving zero landfill waste. Can you imagine yourself not producing trash in one day?

The green cars born in the green environment of the North American plants are then distributed around the continent in returnable shipping containers. The reusable containers have prevented trees from being chopped down for wood (129 million pounds saved) and cardboard (48 million pounds saved). The cars are then taken care of by dealerships that have been certified by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) as green structures.

As the demand for more earth-friendly cars increases, we’re also hoping that car manufacturers build on Toyota’s model and take steps towards greening their productivity and developing their environmental management systems for a brighter, cleaner future ahead.