Toyota recently released its 2011 North America Environmental Report, marking the end of the company’s second environmental action plan (2007 to 2011). Confronted with a failing economy, production slow-downs and recalls, this five-year period proved challenging for the Japanese automaker. Despite the challenges, Toyota managed to meet or exceed many of its environmental targets, including substantial fuel economy improvements, near-zero landfill status at the company’s North American manufacturing plants and a partnership with Tesla Motors to manufacture an electric RAV4 crossover SUV. Cleantech Authority spoke with Cindy Knight from Toyota’s Environment, Safety, and Quality Communications division about the report.
The Environmental Report states that “we challenged them [employees] to find opportunities for improving our performance.” How does Toyota challenge its employees to improve its environmental performance?
Toyota employees are empowered every day to suggest ways to reduce waste, eliminate unnecessary steps, save energy, etc., but during plant downtimes when we perform maintenance on machinery or re-tool, employees are challenged to perform a “water blitz” activity or “energy blitz” where teams are formed to compete to find the greatest savings of resources. For example, during one water blitz, employees in one of the paint shops discovered a way to modify spray nozzles to reduce the amount of water used in a water-borne paint process. Another example: our Georgetown, Kentucky plant conducts a twice-yearly “President’s Shutdown Energy Challenge,” where different shops in the plant compete to reduce energy consumption over the last shutdown period. In our report we mention that the Plastics shop prevailed with a 37% reduction in 2010.
“Partnerships have been instrumental to our success.” How so?
Among other benefits, we’ve grown to appreciate more and more how partnering with community organizations allows us to share our expertise and at the same time, obtain new perspectives and learn new methods of achieving environmental goals. It’s very easy to write a check and make a donation to a worthy cause or organization, but so much more rewarding if you can work side by side on an issue. In a very practical way, our Prius Plug-in demonstration program, where we place vehicles with a variety of institutions, allows us to obtain real-world feedback and data on the use of what is for us an experimental technology.
Toyota is involved in hybrids, plug-in hybrids, electric vehicles, and fuel cell hybrids. Of those four, which one is Toyota expecting to be its dominant technology 20 years from now?
Today, Toyota is taking a portfolio approach to the development of alternative fuel vehicles, because we believe different technologies will find applications in different settings, so we will need a range of products. We like to say “right vehicle in the right place at the right time.” However, we also believe that regardless of fuel choice — gasoline, biofuel, hydrogen, etc. — hybrid technology promises the greatest energy efficiency, which leads to the greatest fuel savings and CO2 reduction.
Toyota’s U.S. parts and vehicle distribution centers in the 2011 fiscal year posted a 93% total waste recycling rate. That’s an impressive figure, but what happens to the waste that’s recycled?
For the most part, separated waste is sent to local recyclers. In some instances waste is recycled into paper products like cardboard and paperboard.
Toyota and other auto manufacturers have been taking part in a voluntary program with the U.S. Department of Energy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Toyota exceeded its 10% per vehicle GHG reduction target, coming in at 17%. But auto manufacturing is inherently energy-intensive and bound to have a high carbon footprint because of the many inputs. Is Toyota finding innovative ways to reduce its carbon footprint?
Toyota constantly looks for ways to reduce energy consumption, as it is by far our most significant environmental impact. We have made strides by switching to high-efficiency lighting systems, installing solar power systems, purchasing renewable energy, and making significant modifications to heating and cooling systems in our plants.
“We also set targets that transcend the life cycle. In Environmental Management, targets guide work with our suppliers and dealerships.” How do Toyota’s targets guide its suppliers and dealerships?
In 2003 Toyota completed construction of a new office building for our sales headquarters — South Campus, which was awarded U.S. Green Building Council Gold LEED certification. Ever since then we’ve set targets to build “green” facilities whenever we build or substantially remodel a facility. We were inspired by our success with South Campus to seek U.S. Green Building Council LEED Certification and now have ten such facilities.
We also help our dealers build green facilities by developing guidelines for them to follow. Our Design Departments work closely with the dealers on the process and we now have 15 who have done so.
Toyota sets targets to manage hazardous materials and substances of concern, and we created for our dealers various tools and training systems to help them with these same goals. One is an online clearinghouse of all the local regulations, requirements and environmental, health and safety resources available. Another is Hazmat U, which trains dealer personnel on hazardous material transportation. We also help dealers implement their own recycling programs similar to what we run throughout our operations — 88% of our dealers participate in recycling.
Do you believe Toyota has a role to play in influencing industry in general to adopt stricter environmental standards? If so, how does it do that or plan on doing that?
At Toyota, we have just tried to lead by example: we think that if we can do it, other companies can as well. Industry in general seems aware of the need to be environmentally responsible, certainly this is true of the auto industry. We hope our annual report offers some examples of how we do it here.
Toyota put 31 RAV4 EV Prototype-Phase Zeros on the road in 2011 to encourage the development of electric vehicle infrastructure. As a seven-time winner of the EPA’s ENERGY STAR® Sustained Excellence Award, Toyota is respected in the cleantech world. Does the company use its good reputation to lobby governments to develop EV or hydrogen infrastructure? If so, can you share some successes Toyota has had?
Toyota is actively involved with organizations such as the Electric Drive Transportation Association, which seeks to encourage government to support the development of advanced technologies. We also seek direct partnerships with universities and agencies, such as the Department of Transportation’s National Labs to work together on specific projects that move us toward the implementation of advanced technologies.
One of the best examples of our preferred approach is the SmartGrid City project in Boulder, Colorado. We placed 10 of our Plug-in Prius prototypes in a demonstration project involving the University of Colorado and the National Renewable Energy Resources Lab. It is the first fully functioning smart grid enabled city in the world. Its goal is to provide increased grid reliability and energy use information. Participating customers are able to remotely control in-home energy management devices.
RASEI, Xcel Energy and Toyota are using the program to gather data on vehicle performance and charging patterns, consumer behavior and preferences, as well as electric utility and customer interactions. The locale offers the additional benefit of monitoring high altitude, cold climate performance of Toyota’s first generation lithium-ion battery. RASEI is the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI), a new joint venture between the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the University of Colorado at Boulder. Toyota is a founding member of the institute.
What are some of Toyota’s key goals and targets for its next five-year plan?
We are in the process of formulating a new set of goals and targets so we don’t have specifics just yet. Water and energy conservation, waste reduction, and partnering with universities, government, and non-profits will continue to shape the big picture at Toyota.
