Rice is the latest sustainable ingredient to be added to Ford’s F-150 pick-up, the best-selling truck in America.
The manufacturer announced this week that the 2014 Ford F-150 will use plastic reinforced with rice hulls, a byproduct of rice grain, in the truck’s electrical harness. The hulls will replace a talc-based reinforcement in a polypropylene composite developed specifically for Ford.
The company said it will use at least 45,000 pounds of hulls, sourced from farms in Arkansas, in the first year of production. The hulls add to the soybeans and the significant amount of recycled materials already in the F-series production process.
More than 650,000 F-Series trucks are sold each year in the U.S., with the fleet pioneering a host of green materials.
Source: GreenBiz