{"id":53320,"date":"2012-09-11T14:55:19","date_gmt":"2012-09-11T18:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=53320"},"modified":"2012-09-11T14:55:19","modified_gmt":"2012-09-11T18:55:19","slug":"gm-offers-scraps-to-help-the-homeless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2012\/09\/gm-offers-scraps-to-help-the-homeless\/","title":{"rendered":"GM Offers Scraps to Help the Homeless"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Veronika Scott shows off coats for the homelss made by her charity.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In normal application, it would be used to take a little bit of buzz out of your engine or noise out of the wind, but GM has discovered what might be considered a more noble purpose for leftover sound deadening material.<\/p>\n

Known as Sonozorb, the insulation is used in doors and other cavities inside General Motors vehicles to reduce wind, road and engine noise.\u00a0 But Veronika Scott approach the maker with an alternative application \u2013 to use inside well-insulated, weatherproof coats that could be offered to Detroit\u2019s homeless by a charity she created while still a student.<\/p>\n

Better yet, the coats can be quickly transformed into a warm sleeping bag for those who either can\u2019t find or choose not to go to one of the city\u2019s homeless shelters.<\/p>\n

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Your News Source!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“Among other challenges \u2013 from design to project funding \u2013 the insulation is the largest expense in the coats’ production,” says Scott, who came up with the idea for the coats as a project during her junior year at the Motor City\u2019s College for Creative Studies \u2013 which has also turned out many of GM\u2019s designers.<\/p>\n

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Using a GM noise suppressing insulation, Sonozorb, the coats can be converted into a warm shelter.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Her charity, the Empowerment Plan in Detroit, has been in operation since December 2010, employing eight previously homeless women to produce an average 150 coats a month.\u00a0 Auto supplier GDC used leftover scraps of Sonzorb to create the filler for Scott\u2019s coats.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom previous projects, we knew how this material could be reused and approached Veronika and GDC, who quickly agreed to participate,\u201d said John Bradburn, GM\u2019s manager of waste-reduction efforts.<\/p>\n

Sonozorb isn\u2019t the sort of material that you\u2019d typical find in an arctic parka or sleeping bag but GM realized it could serve a similar purpose. The maker has provided the charity with 2,000 yards of the sound deadener \u2013 enough to produce about 400 coats.<\/p>\n

“With GM’s help and recommendations,\u201d adds Scott, \u201cI was able to think about materials in a different way.”<\/p>\n

It turns out that Sonozorb has a variety of unexpected applications.\u00a0 Excess material has been used at GM plants to soak up oil spills and during the 2010 BP well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico it was used in booms to corral and absorb spilled oil. The material and oil residue \u2013 over 200,000 pounds in all — were reused in the production of Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrids.<\/p>\n

GM is one of many automakers attempting to minimize factory waste.\u00a0 It claims that 102 of its facilities are now \u201clandfill-free,\u201d and that last year it was able to recycle or reuse 2.5 million metric tons of waste materials that otherwise might have been burned, flushed or dumped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In normal application, it would be used to take a little bit of buzz out of your engine…but GM has donated to a Detroit charity special sound-deadening material for use to make warm winter parkas that can be converted into shelters for the homeless. TheDetroitBureau.com has more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[151],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53320"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53320"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=53320"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=53320"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=53320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}