F-150 Built Ford Green
Sustainable materials make 2014 pickups environmentally friendlier and stronger
Don’t worry, if you get your new F-150’s wiring wet little green rice stalks aren’y going to start sprouting up everywhere.
Rice hulls are the latest sustainable material used in Ford’s quest to be nicer to the environment. In the 2014 F-150, rice hulls are used as one of the products to reinforce plastic used in an electrical harness.
The company will need at least 45,000 pounds of hulls in the first year.
“The 2014 F-Series exemplifies our continued efforts to use recycled content in our vehicles,” said John Viera, Ford global director of sustainability and vehicle environmental matters. “We can have greater impact in this case because of the size and sales volume of this product.”
Mr. Greenjeans. Every 2014 F-150 contains enough recycled cotton to make the equivalent of 10 pairs of jeans.
The rice hulls are sourced from farms in Arkansas and will replace a talc-based reinforcement in a polypropylene composite made by RheTech, a Whitmore Lake, Mich.-based automotive supplier.
Other eco-friendly materials in the new F-Series trucks are soybeans and post-industrial recycled cotton.
In fact, one 2014 Ford F-150 uses the equivalent of about 10 pairs of jeans, 26 bath towels or 31 T-shirts as carpet insulation or sound absorber.
