General Motors’ Baltimore County transmission plant announced its status as a landfill-free facility on Monday, meaning it will no longer send any waste from its production operations to landfills.

“With today’s announcement, Baltimore becomes the eighth GM facility worldwide to reach zero-landfill status,” John R. Buttermore, GM Powertrain vice president of global manufacturing, said Monday outside the GM Powertrain Transmission plant in White Marsh.

“Eliminating waste to this degree is a GM manufacturing priority and is the right thing for our business and the environment.”

The facility has been operating with landfill-free status since May. This year, about 97 percent of waste materials from the site — about 7,300 tons — will be recycled or reused, and 3 percent — about 215 tons — will be converted to energy at a waste-to-energy facility.

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There are slight cost increases to GM for moving the plant to a landfill-free facility, said John Bradburn, senior environmental project engineer for GM. The environmentally friendly results, however, outweigh the costs, Bradburn said.

“We just think it’s the right thing to do,” Bradburn said, adding fuel and petroleum prices can affect the cost of recycling and reusing all facility waste.

In addition to going landfill-free, the GM Powertrain Baltimore plant will be the exclusive manufacturer of GM’s new two-mode hybrid transmission. The technology will increase the fuel efficiency of GM’s full-size sport utility vehicles and pickups up to 25 percent over conventional gasoline Powertrain systems.

The transmission will debut in the 2008 Chevrolet Tahoe and GMC Yukon two-mode hybrids that will be available later this year.

“We have an incredible legacy of manufacturing in Baltimore County, but we’re also involved in future and new technologies,” said David S. Iannucci, executive director of Baltimore County Economic Development. “This is the best of both of those worlds.”

The GM Powertrain Baltimore transmission plant, with more than 400 employees, produced 189,000 transmissions last year. GM reported net income of $891 million in the second quarter of 2007.

acannarsa@baltimoreexaminer.com