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plastics | PVC | Toxic at Any Speed Report | 2006 Plastics Report Card

Moving Toward Sustainable Plastics

A Report Card on the Six Leading Automakers

U.S. automakers are falling behind their foreign competitors in the use of sustainable plastics. The industry leader, Toyota, has set aggressive goals for increasing its use of recyclable and biodegradable plastics, and is also reporting publicly on its progress. While U.S. automakers are making progress in some areas, none are matching Toyota's goals, research and development investments, or actual use of sustainable plastics.

To help consumers and other stakeholders evaluate the progress of automakers towards sustainable plastics, the Ecology Center and Clean Production Action graded the top six auto companies in the U.S. on their policies, goals, and actions. How do corporate-wide environmental goals address plastics use? What are their goals for sustainable plastics? How are they measuring progress toward meeting their goals? And how far along the path of environmentally sustainable plastics have they gone?

According to their report, environmentally sustainable plastics are defined as:

having no hazardous chemicals associated with the life cycle of the material,
being capable of either a) closed-loop recycling (recycled into the same product) or b) degrading into healthy nutrients for the soil, and
being manufactured from renewable raw materials and energy (without the use of genetically modified organisms - GMOs).

The report evaluated and graded the six largest automakers selling into the American market: Daimler Chrysler, Ford, General Motors (GM), Honda, Nissan, and Toyota (see table below). Together these six automakers account for 87% of vehicle sales in the United States.

The report graded the automakers based upon:

their vision for sustainable materials,
the measurable goals they set to achieve sustainable plastics, and
the actions they have taken to transform their use of plastics.

Toyota is the clear sustainable plastics leader. Its Sustainable Plastics Grade Point Average (GPA) of 2.1 or a "C" is almost a grade higher than its closest competitor, Honda, with a GPA of 1.3 or a "D+".

Toyota is the leader because it has:

developed its own innovative renewable-based plastic and closed-loop recyclable plastics,
set measurable goals at the global level, and
taken action, including striving to eliminate its use of PVC.

GM lags the farthest behind with the lowest Sustainable Plastics GPA of 1.0 - which is barely passing with a "D". GM had little to highlight in terms of measurable goals and activities toward sustainable plastics. Nissan, with its Sustainable Plastics GPA of 1.1, and DaimlerChrysler and Ford, with their Sustainable Plastics GPA's of 1.2, however, are only a shade better than GM.

Honda, with a Sustainable Plastics GPA of 1.3, is still struggling, but is slightly ahead of the other companies. The relative strength of Honda's reporting on activities toward sustainable plastics moved it ahead of the others.

While automakers can improve their grades by doing a better job of reporting their activities, such as reporting their goal of reducing PVC use, the level of commitment to taking action to use sustainable plastics is weak among five of the six automakers evaluated here, Toyota being the exception. Assuming that the data provided in their environmental reports and on their webpages are good indicators of the automakers sustainable plastics goals and activities, all of them have a lot of work to do.

Given that the concept of "greening" of plastics is still in its infancy, it should come as little surprise that the overall grade point averages for the automakers on "sustainable plastics" are barely above failing. Certainly disappointing, however, is that the American automakers are at the bottom of the class in terms of sustainable plastics performance.

The report also finds that foreign automakers are faring better in the area of sustainable plastics because the U.S. government lags behind Japan and the European Union in terms of recycling requirements and the elimination of toxic chemicals. This results in an environmental double standard imposed on U.S consumers.

While progress toward sustainable plastics is slow, and progress in the U.S. slower than in Europe and Japan, there are positive examples of change in the industry.

The report concludes with recommendations that automakers should adopt in order to move towards sustainable plastics.
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