Saving Fresh Water

Toyota’s assembly plant in Indiana is expanding to add vehicle production capacity, which means the plant will need more water to paint more vehicles. The existing infrastructure isn’t adequate to carry more water, so instead, team members are identifying innovative ways to use less. 

For example: In the paint shop, before a vehicle body can be painted, water sprays are used during a three-step pretreat process that degreases and removes dirt, rinses, and applies an anticorrosion base coat. New microfiltration modules have been added that eliminate the need for using fresh water at each step. This reduces the use of fresh water by 75% and saves an estimated 54.3 million gallons of fresh water per year. That’s equal to the amount needed to supply drinking water to the entire state of Indiana for one month!