Ford Recycles 1.2 Billion Plastic Bottles A Year

carpets! The global car manufacturer is taking action on sustainability by recycling billions of plastic bottles a year to turn them into carpets for the brand’s subcompact crossover SUV, the EcoSport.

It is reported that each Ford EcoSport interior requires around 470 plastic bottles which are shredded into flakes before being melted down into fibres and woven into carpets

Since launching in 2012, the EcoSport has saved over 650 million 500ML bottles (over 8000 tonnes of plastic) from being dumped into landfills and oceans. Ford’s recycling initiative is an amazing way of keeping the ocean free of plastic and showing the automotive industry how they can help do their bit for the planet by resourcing parts and using renewable matter in this truly ecological way.

Tony Weatherhead (Materials Engineer for Ford Motor Company) mentions “Consumers have a hugely increased awareness of the harm that simply discarding plastic can do, but we have long been on a mission to increase the proportion of recycled and renewable materials that are used in every new car we make.”

But this isn’t all Ford have put in place for the sustainability of our planet. William Clay Ford (Junior Executive Chairman) and Jim Hackett (President and CEO) has expressed:

“It has been 20 years since we produced our first sustainability report but, for us, moving toward a more sustainable world has been a priority from the very start. Our goal is to change the way people move. We don’t have all the answers, but we have the drive and determination to find them. We’ll continue to do things the right way and keep people at the heart of every decision we make. We are building a smarter Ford Motor Company, by Creating Tomorrow Together.”

You can read more about Ford Sustainability here.