Every little (seemingly random?) step counts

Ford Motor Company put out a press release today touting a pro-environmental manufacturing move that at first struck me as utterly absurd, until you think about the potential numbers involved.

They're going to start using a soy-based foam (instead of the current industry standard of pure petroleum-based foam) in seat cushions and padding, starting with the 2008 Mustang and expanding to other makes and models in the following years.

Now this may seem silly at first given that amount of foam used in the manufacturing of some seats is miniscule compared to the amount of gasoline a car uses in its lifetime, but going back to the "every step counts" concept this is still a significant shift and hopefully something that many other industries which use foam can follow.

Based on the press release, they estimate that each vehicle produced today uses approximately 30 pounds of foam, with a total of 9 million pounds of the foam used annually. This new soy foam isn't perfect - it's only 24 percent renewable in the current design (presumably to meet federal safety standards?), but that's still potentially over 2.1 million pounds of renewable, biodegradable material replacing petroleum-derived sources. Furthermore, additional design advances and regulatory testing should be able to increase the percentage of renewable material in the foam in the future, pushing aside yet more petroleum-derived materials.

The other important thing to consider is that many businesses tend to "follow the leader". A little pressure on other car companies to follow suit (especially if the initial research and development is already done) could go a long way toward further increases in the use of renewable resources, and there are obviously many other uses for foam that go beyond seats in cars.

There's still the little issue of soy proliferation causing other environmental harm (deforestation, rising food prices, and so forth), but since the main source of the foam is soybean oil (just like biodiesel!) this technology should be easily applicable to any new bio-oil sources in the future, such as algae.