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GM recycling reaches a milestone

Steve Carmody/Michigan Radio

General Motors is celebrating an environmental milestone. The company says a Lansing autopart distribution center is the automaker’s 100th facility to go “landfill free.”

GM is big into recycling wooden pallets, cardboard boxes and other materials used to ship parts to and from suppliers and other GM plants.

Between 2007 and 2010, General Motors saved $2.5 billion by reusing and re-purposing recyclable materials.

“Not only do we save the money in terms of not dumping material into a landfill,” says Mike Robinson, GM’s vice president of sustainability, “we actually generate revenue by reusing and recycling.”

GM deals with its recyclables in different ways.

For example, in Lansing, the parts distribution center deals with some of its unwanted wooden pallets by selling scrap pallets to a local nursery for fuel to heat its greenhouses.

Steve Carmody has been a reporter for Michigan Public since 2005. Steve previously worked at public radio and television stations in Florida, Oklahoma and Kentucky, and also has extensive experience in commercial broadcasting.