It's quite a feat for a standard household or a small business to produce little to no waste each day, but that premise was taken home at the Baltimore, Md. transmission plant of General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM). The world's second-largest automaker said that its automotive transmission plant is now recycling and reusing all involved parts as a result of the manufacturing process as well as converting all energy produced by 'waste' products. This means the plant is not producing a single bit of waste that needs to be taken to a landfill. In fact, the plant now is not sending anything at all to any landfills anywhere.

The Baltimore plant makes 189,000 transmissions annually and was set to deposit more than 7,500 tons of waste to nearby landfills. Well, no more, according to GM. The plant is now being charged with manufacturing a dual-mode transmission in concert with BMW and DaimlerChrysler, which will be made available in its full size SUV vehicles later in 2007. These include the Chevy Tahoe and Suburban and GMC Yukon and Denali, among others.

It's a fascinating move from GM in that the plant that will be making a new type of transmission meant to be used with both electric-based propulsion as well as traditional gasoline engines will be producing no landfill waste. In my book, that's a huge 'green' score for GM in the race to produce more energy-efficient vehicles while not trashing the surrounding environment with waste products that are just as polluting. In other words, kudos to GM on this one.