OREANDA-NEWS. August 23, 2012. American Honda released the first in a series of short films that highlight environmental initiatives dreamed up by Honda associates that are fulfilling Honda's vision for reducing the company's environmental impact and creating a sustainable future, reported the press-centre of Honda.

The film series, featured on Honda's YouTube channel, will include stories of environmental innovation across Honda in North America, focusing not only on Honda's efforts at developing more fuel-efficient, low emissions vehicles, but also its associates' efforts to minimize the impact of the company's manufacturing and logistics operations.

The first film in the series, "Paint by Numbers," tells the story of how a Honda senior staff engineer, Shubho Bhattacharya, is inspired to develop technology to reduce energy consumption in the automobile body painting process.

"The largest amount of energy that's consumed in a car factory is in the painting process," explains Bhattacharya. "In fact, the painting process consumes about 60 percent of a typical car factory's energy consumption. "

Bhattacharya conceived the Intelligent Paint Technology, and with the help of his fellow Honda associates implemented the new system, which reduces CO2 emissions from painting operations by approximately 25 percent. This represents the reduction of approximately 10,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions per year at Honda's seven auto plants in North America.

Since its implementation at the Marysville Auto Plant in 2008, Honda's patented Intelligent Paint Technology has been applied in Honda plants throughout North America. Celebrating 30 years of auto production using locally and globally sourced parts, Honda plants in North America have been at the forefront of energy efficiency, and have repeatedly received the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Energy Star Award for energy efficiency.

Honda Environmental Leadership
Honda is a leader in the development of leading-edge technologies to improve fuel efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions. Honda has led the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) rankings of overall vehicle environmental performance since 2000, and a Honda vehicle has topped the list of America's greenest vehicles from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) for eleven out of the past twelve years. The company leads all automakers with twelve LEED-Certified "Green Buildings" in North America, and last year announced that ten of its 14 North American manufacturing facilities are zero-waste to landfill.

In 2006, Honda became the first automaker to announce voluntary CO2 emissions reduction targets for its global fleet of automobile, power sports and power equipment products and its global network of manufacturing plants. In 2011, the company set a new CO2 emission reduction targets for 2020, including a 30% reduction in CO2 emissions from its products compared with 2000 levels.