GM’s Metal Pallets Become Scaffolding in their Second Life

What’s better…recycling or reuse?

GM teams always strive to reuse more than they recycle because it uses less energy. We rely on our resource managers to find better options for our materials when we’re done with them. Our landfill-free Talegaon India operations, for example, is now selling its sturdy metal pallets to a company that modifies them and turns them into construction scaffolding equipment.  As we like to say, waste is just a resource out of place and the trick is thinking of all the options available to keep them in use.

We could earn money by selling the crates to a recycler who would melt down the metal, but this example offers greater efficiency while providing an even larger revenue stream.

We share creative reuse examples like this in monthly calls with our environmental engineers so that no matter where a team is based, we can all learn from one another. In fact, our industry-leading 110 landfill-free operations are balanced throughout the globe thanks to these open communications lines and best practice exchanges.