Chevrolet Volt Made of Oil-Soaked Material from Gulf of Mexico

General Motors has found an innovative way to use the oil-soaked plastic boom material used in Gulf of Mexico for its brand new Chevrolet Volt, thus saving 100,000 pounds of waste from the country's landfills, as it said in a press statement. Around 100 miles of the material collected from Alabama and Louisiana coasts will be converted to be used on the Volt, the company mentioned adding that around 100,000 pounds of plastic resin will result form the process.

The plastic will be used for vehicle components, which are made of 25 percent boom material and 25 percent recycled tires from GM's Mildford Proving Ground vehicle test facility.

“Creative recycling is one extension of GM’s overall strategy to reduce its environmental impact,” said Mike Robinson, GM vice president of Environment, Energy and Safety policy. “We reuse and recycle material by-products at our 76 landfill-free facilities every day. This is a good example of using this expertise and applying it to a greater magnitude.”

Of course, General Motors had several partners to help it bring this project to reality, including Heritage Environmental to collect the boom material, Mobile Fluid Recovery, Lucent Polymers and GDC Inc.

“This was purely a matter of helping out,” said John Bradburn, manager of GM’s waste-reduction efforts. “If sent to a landfill, these materials would have taken hundreds of years to begin to break down, and we didn’t want to see the spill further impact the environment. We knew we could identify a beneficial reuse of this material given our experience.”