Sustainable Manufacturing
21st Century Production Processes that Increase Productivity while Protecting the Environment
More than half of the electricity at Siemens’ light rail manufacturing plant in Sacramento comes from solar power generated on site. Siemens is ready to expand this facility so that high-speed rail can be built in America by Americans for Everyone.
Siemens is committed to sustainability – in terms of the products and solutions we offer our customers and how we manufacture them. For the 10th consecutive year, Siemens has been listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. We’re number one in the Diversified Industrials Sector and proud of it!
Our commitment to sustainability is readily apparent at our light rail manufacturing facility in Sacramento, CA. Here, our 700 employees work hard every day to keep Siemens the leading manufacturer of light rail vehicles in North America – and they do it in a sustainable way. Our Sacramento colleagues “walk the talk” on sustainable manufacturing by:
- Using a solar-powered plant to reduce our carbon footprint. More than half of the electricity used by the facility is generated by solar panels that we installed ourselves. Currently, we are expanding our capacity and by the end of this year we will generate about 90 percent of our power needs.
- Employing a dry-cut welding process to eliminate wasting of water. Our special dry-cut welding technology requires no water disposal. This reduces the impact on the environment and results in a superior product. We train our technicians at our facility on this process.
- Reducing waste through technological process—we have cut volatile organic compound waste by more than 50 percent while at the same time increasing production by more than 200 percent over the last three years.
- Recycling, recycling and more recycling: up to 82 percent of all the non-food/wet waste materials from the facility are sent for sorting and recycling. All emptied 55-gallon drums on the property are either sent back to the supplier for reuse or recycled for scrap metal. And we are working with all our suppliers to use recyclable materials and packaging.