Honda Releases second environmental film short
30 October 2012
American Honda has released Every Drop Counts, the second in a series of short films on the initiatives of employees to reduce its environmental impact.
The new film highlights a project undertaken by employees at Honda’s Marysville, Ohio car plant to capture and use the energy present in water falling from rooftop cooling towers. The project began as a simple drawing sketched on a notepad by a retired plant engineer. Inspired by the sketch, Honda engineers from different areas of the plant teamed up to create a unique small-scale hydro power generation system.
Built almost entirely from spare parts and materials in the plant, the team converted a simple ac motor for use as an alternator to generate energy from water as it falls 35 feet to a sump. The low-cost, low-maintenance system produces 50,000kWh of electricity each year and offsets roughly 77,000 pounds of CO2 emissions from the consumption of grid-supplied electricity.