In honor of World Water Day 2013, Ford has announced that it dropped its global water use per vehicle by 8.5 percent in the past year. Combined with decreases stemming from 2009 on, this puts the automaker more than halfway toward its goal of cutting water usage by 30 percent by 2015.
Since 2000, Ford has dropped the amount of water it uses in the manufacturing process by 62 percent, primarily by revamping the process used for creating cooling towers and washing or painting parts. The total amount of water saved is equal to about 10.6 billion gallons - which is the same amount of water used by 99,000 homes in the U.S. each year.
"Ford recognizes the critical importance of water and is committed to conserving water and using it responsibly," said Robert Brown, vice president of Sustainability, Environment and Safety Engineering for Ford. "Many vehicle manufacturing processes require water and the resource is used at every point in our supply chain."
Through the use of water recycling systems and dry machining processes, Ford has been able to drastically reduce the water it needs - and it did it all without sacrificing the integrity of the vehicles or increasing eventual auto repair needed, Business Green reports.