Yokohama Tire Virginia plant touts zero landfill status

The Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd. has announced that its Yokohama Tire Manufacturing Virginia LLC (YTMV) subsidiary that manufactures passenger car and light truck tires in Salem, Virginia , has become a zero landfill operation as of September 2015.

“All waste generated at YTMV now goes to non-landfill options, such as recycling, reuse or energy recovery,” says Neil Dalton, Yokohama Corporation of North America director of environmental health and safety.

To successfully achieve zero-waste-to-landfill status, YTMV says it established processes and practices that deliberately and significantly reduce waste. “In order to be a zero landfill plant, it was important to understand as a company that you can’t throw anything away because there simply is no ‘away,’” says Dalton.

As of the start of 2015, YTMV had reduced its landfill waste output to 2 percent of all waste generated, says the company, and the facility reached the zero level in September. “Our efforts to fulfill our social corporate responsibility of green sustainability begin with our core business of developing products and operating plants that minimize environmental impact,” comments YTMV President Tetsuro (Tex) Murakami.

The zero landfill initiative is part of what Yokohama Rubber calls its ongoing global environmental mandate, set forth in its “medium-term management plan: Grand Design 100,” which sets standards for “harmonizing companywide operations, from manufacturing to product design, with the environment.”

YTMV is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yokohama Rubber’s U.S. subsidiary Yokohama Tire Corporation, which was established as an independent company through the spinoff of the parent company’s Salem plant in 2014.