Every Electric Ford Focus to Contain 22 Recycled Bottles

06 January 2012

Detroit based motoring giant, Ford, plans to divert approximately 2 million post-consumer plastic bottles through the use of REPREVE seat fabric in its new Focus Electric and other new vehicles in the next model year.

According to the company, each Focus Electric contains REPREVE based fabrics that are made from about 22 recycled PET bottles, and will be the first Ford vehicle to have an interior made from 100% clean technology.

Ford said that the recycled seat fabric - supplied by Greensboro, North Carolina based fabric manufacturer, Unifi - is a polyester fibre made from a hybrid blend of recycled materials, including post-industrial fibre waste and post-consumer waste such as the plastic water bottles made of PET.

The company also claimed that by using REPREVE it is also reducing energy consumption by offsetting the need to use newly refined crude oil, while meeting all of its design and comfort requirements.

In 2009, Ford mandated that fabric suppliers use a minimum of 25% recycled content for all 2009 and beyond model year vehicles. Since then, the company said that 37 different fabrics meeting the requirements have been developed and incorporated into its vehicles.

Examples of such products given by Ford include soy foam seat cushions and head restraints, wheat straw-filled plastic, castor oil foam in instrument panels, recycled resins for underbody systems, recycled yarns on seat covers and natural-fibre plastic for interior components.

Currently vehicles are approximately 90% recyclable at end of life. However, the company said that its goal is to raise that figure to 100%.

The Focus Electric, Ford's first all-electric passenger car, first entered production in December 2011 at a Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, with production expected to be under way in March this year.

Ford and Unifi said that they will help collect some of the bottles destined for Ford vehicles by recycling plastic bottles from the North American International Auto Show taking place in the U.S. motor industry's home city of Detroit.

"After decades of education, the United States PET bottle recycling rate is only at 29%, about half the rate of Europe,' said Roger Berrier, president and COO of Unifi Inc.

"We hope this recycling initiative with Ford will help raise visibility around the importance of recycling with a goal to drive recycling rates to 100%, diverting millions of plastic bottles from entering the waste stream," he added.


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