Ford is sticking yet another sustainability feather in its driving hat by becoming the first automaker to join the Water Disclosure Project.
A spin-off of the Carbon Disclosure Project, the idea is to manage the shrinking water supply by setting up a clearing house for the world's largest firms to gather information on water usage, management, and risks.
The Carbon Disclosure Project does the same thing with greenhouse gas emissions. Ford is a member of that effort and has cut its energy use and CO2 emissions by 34 and 44 percent, respectively. Ford's new goal is to reduce new-vehicle greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. and Europe 30 percent by 2020.
"Reducing water use means that plants use less energy pumping and treating water, which would reduce carbon footprint," Susan Rokosz, senior environmental engineer for Ford, said in a prepared statement. "Ford is also pursuing new technologies in which reductions in water use go hand-in-hand with reductions in energy use, such as Minimum Quantity Lubrication (MQL). MQL lubricates cutting tools with a fine spray of oil. Conventional wet machining, by contrast, requires pumping millions of gallons of a mixture of metal-working fluids and water to cool and lubricate the cutting tools."
The Dearborn-based automaker has also been hard at work on water conservation. Between 2000 and 2008, Ford reduced its global H2O usage by 56 percent, or 9.5 billion gallons. It accomplished this by tracking and minimizing consumption during plant downtimes, optimizing cooling tower operations, and investing in advanced technologies.
Source: Susan
Rokosz, senior environmental engineer for Ford
Writer: Jon Zemke
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