Ford puts the PET in its green carpets: New Escape bulks up on recyclables

摘要

Hurricane Katrina taught Ford Motor Co. engineers an important lesson about using recycled materials in vehicles: Plastic laundry bottles don't work. When the 2005 hurricane shut down a resin supplier's factory, Ford tried using recycled Downy fabric softener bottles in car parts. But, says Laura Sinclair, a materials engineer for Ford, the company quickly learned that "if we'd put those in vehicles it would have smelled like you were doing laundry."