The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

THE NEED FOR SUSTAINABLE MANUFACTURING
The last paragraph of My Life and Work describes sustainable manufactur-
ing very explicitly, and Ford practiced it at every opportunity. Woodyard 
(2010) reports that the 2011 Ford Explorer’s body will be made from a 
soybean-based plastic, but Ford himself introduced a soybean-based car 
body 60 years earlier. Among the reasons was the need to conserve steel 
during the World War II, but the idea of using a renewable resource was 
evident even at that time.
Ford News (1923, September 15, p. 3) meanwhile describes the produc-
tion of artificial leather from various forms of cloth, along with then-
advanced safety precautions, such as using air switches and air-powered 
motors in the presence of flammable solvent vapors.
* * *
A great many things are going to change. We shall learn to be masters rather 
than servants of Nature. With all our fancied skill we still depend largely on 
natural resources and think that they cannot be displaced. We dig coal and 
ore and cut down trees. We use the coal and the ore and they are gone; the 
trees cannot be replaced within a lifetime. We shall some day harness the 
heat that is all about us and no longer depend on coal—we may now create 
heat through electricity generated by water power. We shall improve on that 
method. As chemistry advances I feel quite certain that a method will be 
found to transform growing things into substances that will endure better 
than the metals—we have scarcely touched the uses of cotton. Better wood 
can be made than is grown. The spirit of true service will create for us. We 
have only each of us to do our parts sincerely.
Everything is possible ... “ faith is the substance of things hoped for, the 
evidence of things not seen.”

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