14 DAY TRIAL // American multinational corporation General Motors must sure take pride in the fact that its Renaissance Center in Detroit, US sends absolutely no waste to landfill. Thus, the office complex is said to recycle, reuse or convert into energy all the trash it produces on a yearly basis.
More precisely, Environmental Leader tells us that 49% of the Renaissance Center's annual waste is recycled. When compared to the Center's recycling rate of just two years ago, i.e. in 2011, this represents an improvement of 127%.
Whatever trash is not recycled – especially food scraps and used containers – it sent to a nearby facility whose job is to process it and turn it into energy.
To put things into perspective, it must be said that GM's Renaissance Center covers about 5.5 million square feet (0.51 million square meters).
It houses the tallest all-hotel skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere, 11 other businesses, 20 restaurants and 27 retailers, the same source details.
What's more, it is estimated that, throughout the course of a single day, some 120,000 office workers and 3,000 visitors hang about it.
Hence, it should not come as a surprise that, each and every year, the Center produces about 5 million pounds (2.26 million kilograms) of trash.
But for General Motor's efforts to recycle, reuse or convert all this garbage into energy, landfill workers would sure have a lot more work on their hands.
The American multinational corporation currently owns over 100 landfill-free sites. Interestingly enough, its leaders say that, by the year 2020, they plan to up this number to 125. The goal is to improve on General Motor's ecological footprint, they detail.
Apart from striving to send as little trash as possible to landfills, the corporation is making efforts to up its dependence on environmentally friendly energy.
Thus, earlier this month, the corporation announced that it was to spend $24 million (€17.66 million) on equipment that would allow it to produce electricity from landfill gas. The move will benefit General Motor's Fort Wayne and Orion assembly plants.