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EPA applauds Toyota for voluntarily eliminating 1,700,000 pounds per year of hazardous waste

Release Date: 11/29/2005
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CHICAGO (Nov. 29, 2005) - U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5 today presented an award to Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana Inc. for voluntarily eliminating 1.7 million pounds a year of hazardous waste from its manufacturing process.

TMMI joined EPA's National Partnership for Environmental Priorities Program in April of 2004. Since then, TMMI identified its purge solvent and fuel tank primer as two areas where waste could be minimized.

Following some experimentation and innovation, TMMI was eventually able to reduce its purge solvent waste by more than half-from 6.60 to 3.02 pounds per vehicle. This is an annual reduction of over 1.3 million pounds of hazardous waste. TMMI was also able to eliminate its fuel tank primer process resulting in a 400,000 pound annual reduction in barium.

The NPEP voluntary program challenges businesses and manufacturers to become more environmentally aware and to adopt a resource conservation ethic that results in less waste, more recycling and more environment-friendly products.

Waste minimization not only means polluting less; it means saving money too. Participating companies throughout the nation are learning that reducing or eliminating waste can boost production efficiency, and improve their image in their community and increase profits.

EPA created NPEP as part of the Agency's family of voluntary partnership programs, to reduce 30 highly toxic, priority chemicals found in the nation's hazardous waste. This program seeks solutions that prevent pollution at its source, by recovering or recycling chemicals that cannot be easily eliminated or reduced at the endpoint.

EPA's goal is to work with industry and the public to reduce the presence of the 30 priority chemicals in hazardous waste by 50 percent before the end of this year, compared with amounts generated in 1991. For more information about the National Partnership for Environmental Priorities, go to: https://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/hazwaste/minimize/partnership.htm.