UnNews:GM turning oil-spill booms into Volts

This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation.

20 December 2010

A Chevy Volt is a small car, not unlike this one.

DETRIOT, Michigan -- General Motors is collecting 100 miles of plastic booms once used to contain the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The recycled plastic will become cigarette ash trays in new Chevy Volts.

After being recycled, they won't look like oil-spill booms, GM conceded in a press release issued Monday, and unlike the booms, these ash trays won't come to you to recover ambient pollution. But car-buyers will know that they come from the oil spill, and thus will have a personal involvement in the oil spill, even before that first trip to the BP gas station.

The plastic will be used in the 2011 model-year Volts now on sale, a GM spokeswoman said. Though superficially baffling, it is presumed that the factory will send couriers to showrooms across the nation to replace ash trays already in cars with the new, "oil-spill" ash trays.

Mike Robinson, GM vice president of Environment, Energy and Safety policy, said, "Creative recycling is one extension of GM's overall strategy: to sell cars that we can't otherwise sell." A customer can now feel personally connected to the oil spill and better lament the rapacious personal achievement that is killing the planet. All he has to do is pay double for a small car with dual power plants and two tons of batteries that are headed for the landfill in five years.

John Bradburn, manager of GM's waste-reduction efforts, added, "Purchasers of the new Chevy Volt are reducing their environmental footprint. They can reduce it to zero by, say, buying two Chevy Volts and letting them both sit in the garage until they wear out." Mr. Bradburn's previous waste-reduction strategy was recycling GM Environmental Impact Statements into GM Owner's Manuals, which are just as rarely read.

Sources

• Peter Valdes-Dapena "GM turning BP oil spill booms into Volt parts" CNNMoney, December 20, 2010