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Letter to the Editor

Ontario's Discovery Ford Achieves ISO 14001 Certification

OAKVILLE, Ont. -- Discovery Ford in Burlington, Ontario, is the first Ford dealership in North America to achieve ISO 14001 certification - a globally-recognized environmental management standard.

For more than a year, the employees at Discovery Ford worked to identify more than 100 types of chemicals and waste products at the dealership to make sure each one was stored and disposed of in an environmentally-safe way.

After passing an exhaustive audit conducted by KPMG Quality Registrar Inc., Discovery Ford is now certified to ISO 14001 -- an international management standard that regulates and independently audits air, water, chemical handling and recycling. For the certification, the auditors scoured the facility, interviewed employees and reviewed environmental procedures.

"Whether it's with our employees, our production plants, our products or our dealers, Ford is sending a clear message that protecting the environment is everyone's job," said Alain Batty, president and CEO, Ford Motor Company of Canada, Limited. "At Ford, we agree with Marshall McLuhan's assertion that: 'There are no passengers on planet Earth. We are all crew.' And a leading company with global resources should make a difference."

To help make a difference in their community, the 100 employees at Discovery Ford examined each item used by the dealership, from paint and oil filters, to latex gloves and even the toner in the copying machine, to determine if it could be recycled, and if not, how to dispose of it safely. Employees also attended training sessions on the dealership's environmental policies and helped to set objectives to keep improving the operations.

"Most of us at Discovery Ford not only work, but also live, play and are raising our families right here in this community. Ensuring that we are taking steps to protect our local environment was simply the right thing to do," said Allan Pearson, president of Discovery Ford.

Other recent Ford of Canada environmental achievements include:

• All of Ford of Canada's facilities have received ISO 14001 certification, making it the first Canadian automotive company with multiple locations to have all operations fully certified.
• All of the 2001 model year cars, pickup trucks, SUVs and minivans Ford of Canada sells nationally meet or exceed stringent United States Environmental Protection Agency Low Emission Vehicle standards. The cumulative impact of Ford's line-up of LEVs is equivalent to eliminating the smog-forming emissions from more than 92,000 non-LEV cars and trucks on Canadian roads.
• Ford is Canada's largest automotive recycler. Through Ford's wholly-owned GreenLeaf subsidiary, the company has the capacity to process more than 22,000 vehicles a year to ensure each vehicle is recycled with maximum efficiency, leaving minimal waste material going to landfills.

Ford of Canada's central and regional offices, vehicle assembly and engine manufacturing plants, and affiliates such as Jaguar, Volvo and Land Rover, employ more than 16,000 people. Last year, revenues for Canadian operations were $24.6 billion, making Ford of Canada one of the country's largest privately-held companies. In the past decade Ford's Canadian operations have attracted more than $7 billion in new investment. There are 543 Ford and Ford-Lincoln dealerships in all provinces and two territories, which employ more than 21,500 people.

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