The irony is that despite the rain, South Africa remains a water-stressed country, receiving less than half the global average rainfall and experiencing significant regional variations in water availability. Climate change, including droughts and increasing evaporation, exacerbates the issue, putting pressure on water resources. Poor infrastructure, mismanagement and increasing demand owing to population and economic growth further contribute to the crisis.

It's for these reasons and others that the Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa (Manufacturing) (Pty) Limited (“Ford South Africa”) is boosting its efforts and investment to reduce its water consumption as well as its energy and carbon footprint.

On Earth Day (22 April), Rhys Davies, Operations Director at Ford South Africa discusses the progress being made at the Silverton Manufacturing Plant: “The most recent example is the recycling of effluent in our Silverton plant back into the Paint Shop, where it’s repurposed in a perpetual loop with no wastage, thereby eliminating the need to buy fresh water.

“A lot of South Africans will look out of the windows of their homes, offices and vehicles and assume that the county has as much water as it needs. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. That’s why measures to conserve and reuse water are critically important, and our new water recycling project will save almost 15 million litres of water a year.” Plans are also afoot to replicate the closed-loop, zero-waste cycle of reusing water elsewhere in the plant, Rhys notes.

These initiatives are complemented by the plant’s solar carpark, which uses more than 30 000 solar panels to generate 13.4MW of electricity, which is sufficient to power the entire plant during the day. The company is investigating the installation of batteries, as well as other sources of renewable energy to enable it to fully operate independently of the national grid.

A new scrapyard has been constructed, which increases the amount of cardboard, paper and plastic waste that is sorted on site and recycled, in line with Ford Motor Company’s objective of reaching zero waste to landfill across its global operations. The Silverton plant team continues to investigate other alternatives for its waste to turn this into a sustainable by-product that can benefit both the environment and future business opportunities.