Toyota's Busnaston plant as green as it gets

[ahmed_7erzon]

Selling environmentally-friendly products has become a major focus in several industries, including the automobile. Just think about all the emphasis on fuel economy, the use of recycled materials and the rise of electric vehicles. Some companies are merely trying to look good, but Toyota is putting its money where its mouth is.

Look at the Busnaston plant in the U.K.

Building cars requires a huge amount of energy and that's exactly what the Japanese automaker wants to address by using solar panels to supply part of the power used by the facility.

A total of 17,000 solar panels – in an area equivalent to 4.3 soccer fields – generate up to 4.6 million kWh per year, enough to produce 7,000 vehicles (or 150 million cups of tea) with clean energy.

For Mother Nature, this represents 2,000 fewer tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere every year.

Busnaston is Toyota's first European plant to be designated a Sustainable Plant. Since its opening in 1993, it managed to reduce energy and water usage per vehicle by 70 percent, and waste produced per vehicle by 60 percent. Even better: it sends zero waste to landfill or incineration.

That's about as green as a car manufacturing plant can get!