Ford committed to decrease water footprint
Ford's 'Sustainability Blues' event, which formed part of this year's trend conference in Michigan in the USA, focused on water conservation, a main pillar in the vehicle manufacturer's global green mission.
Water treatment plant
"For more than a decade Ford has been committed to decreasing its water footprint," said Todd Walton, Ford's environmental quality manager for Asia Pacific. "Using water-saving initiatives across its global facilities, the company has reduced water use in everything from cooling towers to paint operations, resulting in a 62% drop in total global water consumption between 2000 and 2012 - a saving of 40.1 billion litres."
Walton outlined Ford's newly announced global water strategy and how pioneering technologies and supply chain management are already saving water in some of the most water-scarce regions on the planet. In Asia Pacific, the Chennai Vehicle Assembly and Engine Plant in Tamil Nadu, India, now discharges zero wastewater and recycles the maximum amount of water for re-use in the production process.
New technique
In the Changan Ford Engine Plant and the newly opened Transmission Plant in Chongqing, a new technique called minimum quantity lubricant, drastically reduces coolant and water use compared to conventional wet machining. For a production line producing 450,000 engines, this technology saves around 1.1 million litres of water per year.
The Silverton Assembly plant in Pretoria, South Africa, where the Ford Ranger is built, also installed an all-new wastewater treatment facility in 2012. The wastewater facility is capable of treating the entire plant's daily water use in just eight hours, while up to 20 percent of that water is reused in industrial processes.
"Ford has been growing in many areas of the world where water access and availability are a concern," said Walton. "So we've been actively working there to help people get access to fresh drinking water. In India, we have launched projects to install water filters in government-run pre-school centres for children and primary schools near our plants. We also run campaigns to communicate the importance of clean drinking water for children."
The community in South Africa has also benefited from Ford's commitment to safe drinking water. In 2013 it installed Playpumps at the Thipe Primary School in Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria. The system makes use of a recreational roundabout for children, which pumps borehole water as it rotates and brings much-needed drinking water to the local community.
