The Toyota Production System

Constant efforts to improve standards throughout the workplace have radically reduced the environmental impact of production at our plants. For example:

Toyota's vehicle plants in both the U.K. and France, have achieved the ambitious target of delivering zero waste to landfill*. Applying TPS principles, staff carefully examined how production waste was created, and invented appropriate solutions to reduce, reuse or recycle all the ‘waste’ materials generated. This has resulted in a 73% reduction of waste going to landfill since 2001.

Since 2001

• Total energy usage per car has been reduced by 37% across all our European manufacturing plants.
• Water usage has been reduced in Europe by 34%.
• Packaging waste has been reduced through the full use of returnable or recyclable packaging.
• Volatile organic compound emissions per square metre of painted surface have been reduced by 21%.        

* Zero waste to landfill: less than 3% of 1997 amount of waste disposal to landfill

Greener manufacturing in the Toyota Prius
The manufacturing process for the new Prius model has been organized to reduce the amount of energy needed for building the car, so as to cut the CO2 emissions during manufacturing by 31% compared to the previous Prius production plant.  

Special Eco-plastic made from plants to provide floor mats is used.  This further reduces CO2 emissions during manufacturing.  

The batteries are smaller and more efficient resulting in 33% less CO2 emissions durning manufacturing when compared to the previous generation Prius.   

The Toyota Prius is 90% recyclable!