Toyota's 'green' efforts move to cow dung

TOKYO • 'When it comes to saving the planet, Toyota Motor Corp seems to be leaving no stone unturned. Nor, as it turns out, any pile of cow dung.

The world’s number-two car maker said yesterday it had co-developed a cutting-edge composting ingredient and process that drastically reduce nitrous oxide, methane and other greenhouse gases, as well as offensive odours produced by livestock waste—part of its efforts to clean the environment.

“We’ve always wanted to do more in the agricultural field,” Yasumori Ihara, a managing officer at Toyota, told a news conference.

“This is a dream come true.”

When mixed with cow manure, the ingredient — developed jointly with Menicon Co, Japan’s top maker of contact lenses—speeds up the time it takes to convert the waste into compost, to 45 days from anywhere between 90 to 180 days. The resulting compost is also of a higher quality, containing less nitrate-nitrogen, a water pollutant, Toyota said.

“After using this formula, the neighbours stopped complaining about the pungent smell,” a cattle farmer who tested the magic powder, appropriately named “resQ45” for Recycle, Eco, Speed, Quality and playing on the word rescue, said in a promotional video.'