General Motors Going Green

General Motors Going Green

When many companies started there was no one thinking about being energy efficient or worry about polluting the air. They were more worried about making money, selling a product and sustaining jobs for the employees. But now we are in the 2000s and people are worried about the environment and trying to find ways to conserve energy and go “green”. Going green means being more environmentally friendly.

One company that has never really been seen as a green company is General Motors (GM). GM was founded in 1908 and is based in Detroit, Michigan. GM is the producer of Chevrolet, Pontiac, GMC, Cadillac, and Hummer vehicles. Everyone knows about how big GM is and all the cars that they have produced and the big factories they have. Being green was never a big concern to them until recently when other automakers started to make strides toward hybrid cars and cars with better fuel efficiency. GM first started making strides by making there factories more green. Over the past five years they have reduced their energy use at North American facilities by 25%. They have managed to do this by capturing gas from landfills and by installing solar panels on the top of some facilities. They have also managed to cut water use at some facilities by trapping rainwater and using it for the restrooms for flushing toilets (General Motors Corporation, 2000). This is how they made their facilities greener but making their vehicles more environmentally friendly is done in a different way.

There are five different ways that GM is trying to become greener when it comes to making vehicles. They can make more efficient gasoline that can go more than 30 miles per gallon. GM has also started to produce