Furnishing GM’s Space with Reclaimed Waste

Come on in and take a seat on our pallet furniture. Rest your coffee mug on a table we made from an old engine. Across our operations, a few of our buildings are teaming up to reclaim GM’s manufacturing scrap and using it to spruce up conference rooms, lobbies and more.

Industrial modern décor and reclaimed wood are design cues that pop up all over Pinterest, home decorating mags and blogs. Here are a few examples of how some of our facilities are interpreting the trend.

Getting the Wheels Turning: A café at Vauxhall’s headquarters in England unveiled the Green Room, which includes tables made from scrap alloy wheels and old engine parts from the Vauxhall Corsa. Metal containers from the Luton plant are repurposed as a magazine rack. We’re also collaborating with an artist who will help us transform old GM engine blocks into coffee tables for a few offices at our Technical Center in Warren, Mich.

Meeting of the Minds: Our Zaragoza Assembly plant in Spain created a "Sustainable Living" meeting space furnished with waste from the plant, such as cartons and wood pallets. Employees partnered with Petula Plas design firm on the project. GM Spain Technical Director Alejo Catalan said he was hoping this workspace would foster creativity and “become the most sought room for employees to have meetings on the ground.”

Planting Roots: Planter boxes filled with flowers around GM’s Technical Center in Warren, Mich. are actually repurposed scrap Chevrolet Volt battery cases. The latest models are covered in automotive camouflage—vinyl used to cover up a car so people can’t see its design before the public reveal.

Getting Schooled: We’re developing a prototype chair and desk for school-aged children thanks to a large pallet that comes to our Orion (Michigan) Assembly plant from Austria. Given the large size – it carries six engines – few recyclers want it. One of these pallets alone can make three sets of desks and chairs. We’re working on a flat surface for the top.

Reuse doesn’t always have to push the limits of creativity—sometimes a simple swap makes sense. Take our call center in Austin, for example. By a match made through the Austin Materials Marketplace, a local office product and supply company serving small businesses and startups received 75 cubic yards of our tables, chairs, shelves, and light fixtures. In this case, their second life is the same as their first…no reinvention or reworking required.