Henry Ford and Sustainability

Henry Ford wrote this in 1922

From his autobiography, "My Life and Work," co-written by Samuel Crowther

"Take a few more instances of saving. The sweepings net six hundred thousand dollars a year. Experiments are constantly going on in the utilization of scrap. In one of the stamping operations, six inch circles of sheet metal are cut out. These formerly went into scrap. The waste worried the men. They worked to find uses for the discs. They found that the plates were just the right size and shape to stamp into radiator caps but the metal was not think enough. They tried a double thickness of plates, with the result that they made a cap which tests proved to be stronger than the one made out of a single sheet of metal. We get 150,000 of those discs a day. We have now found a use for about 20,000 a day and expect to find further uses for the remainder."

Link to book on Amazon

Did you know:

Henry Ford used wood scraps from the production of Model T's to create charcoal. Originally named Ford Charcoal, the name was changed to Kingsford Charcoal after Ford's relative E. G. Kingsford brokered the selection of the new charcoal plant site.