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Ford, Subaru, VW win top safety picks

But safety list from insurance industry is smaller than last year's

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Ford, Subaru and Volkswagen sit atop the U.S. insurance industry's annual list of the safest new vehicles, according to a closely watched assessment used by car companies to lure safety-conscious consumers to showrooms.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety awarded its "top safety pick" on Wednesday to 19 passenger cars and eight sport utility vehicles for the 2010 model year. The institute substantially reduced the number of awards compared with 2009, because of tougher requirements for roof strength.

Ford Motor Co. and its Volvo unit received the most awards with six, followed by five awards apiece for Japanese automaker Subaru and German automaker Volkswagen AG and its Audi unit.

Chrysler Group LLC received four awards followed by two each for Honda Motor Co. and General Motors Co.

Toyota Motor Corp., BMW AG, Mazda Motor Corp. and Mitsubishi Motors Corp. were shut out in the annual IIHS review.

Ford Taurus
Ford's recipients include the Ford Taurus and Lincoln MKS passenger cars and the Volvo S80 and C30 passenger cars and the XC60 and XC90 SUVs.

Ford said in a statement it is "committed to providing customers with safe vehicles for a broad range of real-world crash conditions."

Subaru recorded winners with the Subaru Legacy, Outback and Impreza cars and Tribeca and Forester SUVs. Subaru was the only automaker with an IIHS winner in all four vehicle classes in which it competes.

The automaker, which has bucked the brutal U.S. sales market with a 13 percent increase during the first 10 months of 2009, attributed its safety success to a unique engine design that sits low in the vehicle chassis and moves down and under occupants in a frontal collision.

Tom Doll, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Subaru of America, said the awards were a "tribute to the engineering that goes into Subaru products."

Volkswagen scored with the 4-door versions of the Jetta, Passat and Golf, the Audi A3 and the Volkswagen Tiguan, a small SUV. Mark Barnes, Volkswagen of America's chief operating officer, said the "safety of our cars is of the utmost concern, from the initial design stages all the way through the maintenance procedures at dealerships."

Chrysler won the award for the Chrysler Sebring and Dodge Avenger sedans equipped with optional electronic stability control, the Dodge Journey midsize SUV and the Jeep Patriot with optional side thorax air bags.

Scott Kunselman, Chrysler's senior vice president-engineering, said the awards underscore the Auburn Hills, Mich., automaker's "engineering capability and leadership in occupant protection."

GM and Honda
General Motors Co. and Honda Motor Co. both received two awards. GM was recognized for the Buick LaCrosse and the Chevrolet Malibu while Honda won for 4-door versions of the Civic with optional electronic stability control and the Honda Element.

Other winners included the Nissan Cube, the Kia Soul and the Mercedes C Class.

The vehicles are selected for best protecting motorists in front, side and rear crash tests based on Institute evaluations during the year. The vehicles are required to have electronic stability control, or ESC, to qualify for the award. Earlier this year, the Institute said vehicles would need to receive its highest score in its roof strength evaluation to qualify the safety pick designation.

"With the addition of our roof strength evaluation, our crash test results now cover all four of the most common kinds of crashes," said Institute president Adrian Lund. "Consumers can use this list to zero in on the vehicles that are on the top rung for safety."

The Institute awarded its top prize to 94 vehicles in 2009 and attributed the decline in awards this year to the roof strength requirement. The Honda Accord and the Ford Fusion both dropped off the list because 2010 versions did not earn high enough scores on the roof test.

The Toyota Camry would have made the list, the Institute said, if it had received the highest rating in rear crash protection. The Institute said the Camry's seats and head restraints were rated marginal for protection against whiplash injuries.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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2009 Subaru Forester Blows Past Toyota RAV4 in Consumer Reports Test

http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=128409

YONKERS, New York ? The redesigned 2009 Subaru Forester has unseated the 2008 Toyota RAV4 as the top-ranked small SUV, according to a new report published by Consumer Reports. The RAV4 has long been the consumer publication's top-ranked SUV.

The Forester 2.5XT dominated a group of small SUVs that included the cheaper Forester 2.5x, Mitsubishi Outlander LS, Nissan Rogue SL, Kia Sorento LX and Jeep Liberty Sport. The redesigned Jeep Liberty was at the bottom of its class, only earning a "fair" rating. "It's routine for vehicles to achieve a better score following a redesign," said Consumer Reports in a statement. "But in the case of the Jeep Liberty, the redesigned vehicle actually scored lower than its predecessor."

Consumer Reports also tested the midsize Dodge Journey in a separate evaluation and rated it "good" overall. It said the Journey is "one of Chrysler's better recent offerings."

The Outlander and the Rogue scored near the top of the ratings with "very good" overall scores.

Consumer Reports said it is recommending only the Forester and the Outlander. It noted that it "doesn't have reliability data yet on the Rogue, and the Sorento's below-average reliability prevents CR from recommending it. The Jeep Liberty scores too low in CR's road tests to be recommended."

What this means to you: Sometimes it pays to redesign a vehicle. Subaru's Forester is really coming into its own. ? Anita Lienert, Correspondent
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It's waste not, want not at super green Subaru plant

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/environment/2008-02-18-green-factories_N.htm

By Chris Woodyard, USA TODAY

LAFAYETTE, Ind. ? Subaru's giant assembly plant here is on track to produce 180,000 cars this year. Yet the automaker pledges that virtually none of the waste generated from its eye-popping output will wind up in a dump.

Copper-laden slag left over from welding is collected and shipped to Spain for recycling. Styrofoam forms encasing delicate engine parts are returned to Japan for the next round of deliveries. Even small protective plastic caps are collected in bins to be melted down to make something else.

All told, Subaru says 99.8% of the plant's refuse is recycled or reused so it doesn't go to a landfill. That includes a small portion, about 5%, that goes to a waste-to-energy plant that burns waste to make steam to heat Indianapolis' downtown.

Subaru is one of a growing number of companies claiming or working toward "zero landfill" status. While success earns environmental bragging rights ? Subaru has TV ads about this plant's efforts ? reuse and recycling also cuts costs to the tune of millions of dollars a year.

Other companies, from brewer Anheuser-Busch (BUD) to imaging-equipment maker Xerox (XRX), say they are going zero-landfill as well.

But it isn't always easy. The world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart (WMT), which deals with a mountain of boxes, returned products and thousands of stores, is trying for a 25% solid waste reduction this year as part of the waste war declared by CEO Lee Scott three years ago.

Environmentalists and waste watchers say individuals and companies can learn from leading-edge corporate clutter fighters.

The zero-landfill movement is "not as popular as it should be," says Allan Gerlat,editor of the trade publication Waste News. "It's readily approaching waste at an earlier level in the stream. ? It's a more efficient way to go about it."

While the trend has caught on in Japan, in the USA, "We're just starting to adopt zero waste," says Gary Liss, a waste consultant based in Loomis, Calif.

Japanese-owned auto companies have a head start. Toyota (TM) and Honda (HMC), among others, long have practiced kaizen, or continuous improvement. Among its tenets is reduction of muda, or waste, a costly drag on production.

Their plants usually have key suppliers nearby who practice just-in-time delivery ? daily deliveries of key parts. That means an ample number of otherwise empty trucks that can carry back waste for reuse at no added cost.

Workers are gung-ho greenies

At Subaru, eliminating, recycling or reusing even the tiniest stuff is treated with an almost religious fervor among the 2,842 workers.

"We can talk trash all day," says Denise Coogan, the environmental affairs manager who means shop-floor discards, not basketball-court braggadocio.

Subaru pursues no-landfill status while churning out vehicles: 147,156 Subaru Legacy, Outback and Tribeca models and Camrys for partner Toyota last year.

The Lafayette plant opened in 1989 as a joint venture of Subaru and Isuzu. But it wasn't until 2002, the year before Subaru parent Fuji Heavy Industries became sole owner of the plant, that it got serious about its zero-landfill goal. Plant officials set a five-year deadline and say they met it in 2004, three years ahead of schedule.

After the five-year goal was set, plant managers started by analyzing what they were throwing away. "One of the first things we did was Dumpster dive," Coogan says. They spread all the trash out on the pavement to get a good look.

The team immediately saw that lots of the flotsam and jetsam could be coordinated into separate heaps for efficiency. For instance, plastic shrink wrap all could be thrown in the same barrel and more easily recycled. Ditto for the pins left over from pop riveting.

Enlisting the help of suppliers

A big part of the effort, and a big factor in cutting costs as well as waste, was persuading suppliers to take back packaging or other items removed during the automaking process and find ways to reuse them. Why throw away or melt down plastic packaging that can be reused to protect another load?

Having suppliers close by helped make the case for having them take back in their empty trucks waste for reuse. Seats come from a company in Frankfort, Ind., a half-hour drive away. Dashboards come from Greencastle, Ind., an hour away.

Subaru, however, still had to find a way to tackle its own manufacturing waste, including:

?Steel. A car's fenders, roof and body are stamped by giant presses from sheet metal, like cutting cookies from a sheet of dough. Subaru found it could limit excess by simply getting the right size steel roll for the parts. They saved 102 pounds of steel waste per car.

?Wood. Pallets commonly are reused here, as in just about every factory. But when they are no longer usable at Subaru's plant, they are rebuilt, if salvageable, or ground into mulch for gardens.

?Plastic. Flawed plastic bumpers that can't be installed are ground into pellets to make new bumpers. When a supplier's blue plastic sheeting proved hard to recycle, the supplier was able to switch to a clear shrink wrap. Layers of protective plastic in some parts shipments were eliminated when it was found they could arrive safely without it.

?Styrofoam. Reuse paid greater dividends. Styrofoam inserts protecting engine parts can be used for five trips from Japan before they have be recycled. The reuse effort has saved $1.3 million a year, Coogan says.

While all the obvious recycling has been done, officials are still trying to squeeze out more. Last year's 99.8% recycle and reuse rate marked a 0.2 percentage point improvement over 2006. "It becomes harder and harder as you get closer," says Senior Vice President Thomas Easterday. As a result, Coogan's goal is morphing from recycling waste to minimizing its creation in the first place.

Residual waste that can't be re-used or recycled becomes steam for heat. It is trucked to Covanta Energy's waste-to-energy plant an hour's drive away in Indianapolis. There it joins city rubbish as fuel for the massive boilers that supply steam to the city's downtown. Ashes go to the landfill, but the process reduces waste volume by 90%.

To handle its mountain of recyclables, Subaru has a contractor on the plant floor with a 30-worker team that collects recyclables from around the shop floor all day. The process also requires the cooperation of Subaru's assembly employees. For example, Rick Cordray, 48, has to toss the protective plastic caps from air-conditioning compressor units into a nearby bin.

"I'm a pretty good shot," he says.

To reinforce the message with employees and add to its recycling quotient, the plant has multicolored barrels in break areas for workers to recycle personal waste. Yellow barrels for glass, red for aluminum cans and so on.

Saving trees, saving money

Like Subaru, other companies have discovered that recycling isn't just public relations. Being green can save some real green.

Toyota says it has a 97% zero-landfill status average over its 14 assembly plants. Copy-machine maker Ricoh has been zero-landfill at its U.S. plants since 2002.

Aamco Transmissions, the 885-store chain in the USA, has started a program with franchisees to dramatically reduce waste. Strategies include recycling cleaning solvents and using waste transmission fluid to heat stores. CEO Todd Leff estimates the package could net store owners another $25,000 a year.

Fetzer Vineyards, a big California winemaker, started its waste-management team in 1990 primarily as a search for cost savings, particularly to cut what it was spending on garbage hauling. Fetzer decided to do its own trash removal, but costs continued to add up with every trip to the dump.

Then, using many of the same tactics employed by Subaru, it was able to reduce its refuse volume from 1,724 cubic yards in 1990 to 60 cubic yards by 2005, says Ann Thrupp, the sustainability manager. Now, rubber bands holding rolls of labels go back to suppliers. Some cardboard boxes are reused. Stems and leftover vegetation from winemaking become garden topper.

Likewise, Anheuser-Busch has been able to recycle 99% of the solid waste generated at its 12 breweries. "We're looking at how do we get that last 1%," says John Stier, director of environmental affairs. Among other things, the brewer composts the beechwood chips that it ballyhoos in ads as giving its beers distinctive flavor.

Retailers can face a tougher challenge when it comes to zero-landfill because of their many stores, need to dispose of spoiled food and huge inventory that includes household hazardous wastes.

Some are making major progress. Safeway (SWY), which operates 535 Safeway, Vons and Pavilions supermarkets in California, says it diverts 85% of its solid waste from landfills in the state. Target (TGT) says it has cut waste by 70%. The biggest retailer, Wal-Mart, lags behind because it started later than the others, consultant Liss says.

Wal-Mart CEO Scott set a zero-waste goal for the cost-conscious retailer in 2005. "Think about it," he said at the time. "If we have to throw it away, we had to buy it first. So we pay twice. Once to get it, once to have it taken away."

Though only shooting to cut waste by 25% as a first step, the chain is making progress. Wal-Mart says it found an innovative way to recycle disparate plastic waste. Store crews are bailing it between two pallets. The retailer has recycled millions of pounds of plastic hangers, office paper and aluminum cans. Wal-Mart now is working with suppliers to reduce product packaging, both shipping materials and the final retail package, says Rand Waddoups, senior director of sustainability.

The next step: The rest of us

If companies can do it, why can't individuals?

Companies, of course, have an incentive to save money. But Subaru officials say some of their techniques would work for consumers.

They know. They've tried them.

"You should have seen my wife's face when I asked if we could tip over the trash can," Easterday says.