It's getting easier to be green

摘要

Why would you want to put used stuff in my car?" Al Cullum asked his son Terry one night at the dinner table. The younger Mr. Cullum, then working on the interior team of the '92 Cadillac Seville, had just told his father about the perfect resin they had found for the car's headliner: recycled PET from pop bottles.Mr. Cullum's children thought it was fantastic. "It's almost a generational thing," explains Mr. Cullum, now manager of General Motors Corp.'s public policy center.With plastics recycling, however, it's not just the public's attitude that is warming. Technology and profitability are on the rise, making recycled plastic components somewhat more attractive, logistically and economically, to OEMs. Environmentallyconcerned, but also fiscally and legally wary, automakers are increasing the purchase of components from recycled materials.