Product Life Cycle | Overview
At GM, we are committed to reducing the environmental impact of our products through their entire lifecycle – from manufacturing to the end of their useful life.
Vehicle Design
When designing new vehicles, we use recycled and bio-based materials from renewable resources whenever economically and technically possible. GM engineers work with their materials and components suppliers to help identify opportunities to continually increase the use of these materials. Recycled materials in our products come from a variety of origins – from things like old pop bottles, blue jeans and nylon carpet, to used tires and recycled vehicle bumpers. We also are making use of renewable natural fibers like balsa wood, jute and sisal in the design of our new vehicles.
Vehicle End-of-Life
When GM vehicles reach the end of their useful life for their owners, we want to ensure that those vehicles are disposed of responsibly. To help make this happen, we design our vehicles to be as recyclable and recoverable as is feasible, and we are committed to implementing these designs on our vehicles around the world. GM follows industry ISO standards on vehicle recycling and recoverability and we have developed internal global standards as well to gain common benefits across regions. Currently, GM vehicles are at least 85 percent recyclable and 95 percent recoverable. We work directly with the vehicle dismantling industry to help ensure that the majority of vehicle materials can be recycled or reused, thereby avoiding landfill.
