When manufacturing a product such as the Model T, there are necessary demands to be met. In Arnold and Faurote's 1915 book, Ford Methods and the Ford Shops, it is mentioned again and again that the plant could pump out 1,000 cars in a single day and that still wouldn't be enough to meet customer demands. Most impressive however, was the company's ability to reduce the price so much due to efficient production methods while still maintaining a certain high quality. This was certainly something the Ford Motor Company took pride in, claiming that even if the car was not cheaper it would probably sell just as well due to its reliability and appeal. Again in the company's 1912 booklet it is noted:

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"This company has no monopoly of the automobile industry; its cars have been sold in the open market, purely on their merits, in direct competition with, and entirely independent of all others, and the people have bought nearly 100,000 of them, not because they were cheaper, but because they were better value than any other." (1912 Ford Company Facts, 5)

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Whatever the reason people purchased a Model T, the truth of the matter is that the number sold was astounding- over 15 million between the first Model T in 1908 and the last in 1927. The Model T's greatest asset was that it was accessible to both the wealthy and the working class, and because almost anyone could afford it, almost anyone could enjoy the convenience of the automobile for the first time. In a lot of ways, Henry Ford's vision for the Model T was achieved, but there were also ramifications which he never anticipated which have transformed Americans' lifestyles and the landscape. Without question, attitudes towards the environment are completely different today than at the beginning of the twentieth century. The natural resources and raw materials required of manufacturing processes were believed to be in endless supply in early industries; it was believed that Mother Nature would be able to perpetually regenerate. The understanding of nature continued to be drawn from the views of the first American settlers, that the landscape should be controlled, tamed, and civilized. Industrialization gave humans even greater power over nature, but they assumed nature would always be there.

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Ford truly believed that machine and nature were meant to coexist, with the convenience of the first enabling the pleasure of the latter. On the first page of his biography he addresses this very issue:

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"When one speaks of increasing power, machinery, and industry there comes up a picture of a cold, metallic sort of world in which great factories will drive away the trees, the flowers, the birds, and the green fields. And that then we shall have a world composed of metal machines and human machines. With all of that I do not agree. I think that unless we know more about machines and their use, unless we better understand the mechanical portions of life, we cannot have the time to enjoy the trees, and the birds, and the flowers, and the green fields." - Henry Ford, My Life and Work

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​Unfortunately while this may have been valid at first, Americans' dependence on the car has ended up compromising the environment and even Henry Ford began to refer to the industry as a heartless monster at the end of his career. In a lot of ways he felt guilty for destroying rather than preserving the nostalgia of his childhood, repelling the technology and machinery that had provided so much inspiration just a few decades before. As millions of cars inhabited the planet, so did their waste.

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Initially, Ford tended to view waste as measured by time in a regulated environment of production rather than actual consumption and discarding of those consumed goods having an impact beyond the site. To Ford, waste is spoken of in terms of productivity and quantity of product output. He writes, "I have striven toward manufacturing with minimum of waste, both of materials and human effort" (Ford, 19). One can only assume that when he talks of materials he implies mistakes are not made in manufacturing or assembly because the process is so flawless. However, real industrial wastes are physical materials that are dismissed and blend into the landscape in solid, liquid, and gaseous states. Ford, like other industrialists, was not aware of the long-term effects, as in what to do once the useable life of his factories and products was reached.

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"Viewed from a design perspective, the Model T epitomized the general goal of the first industrialists: to make a product that was desirable, affordable, and operable by anyone, just about anywhere; that lasted a certain amount of time (until it was time to buy a new one); and that could be produced cheaply and quickly. Along these lines, technical development centered on increasing "power, accuracy, economy, system, continuity, and speed" to use the Ford manufacturing checklist for mass production."  - McDonough and Braungart, Cradle to Cradle, 24

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Cars especially are constituted of materials that have no future value once people want to get rid of them, and although standardized parts made the cars easier to use and fix, it only encouraged the replacement of broken parts with the old ones being discarded. Ford pointed out, "the parts could be made so cheaply that it would be less expensive to buy new ones than to have the old ones repaired" (Mahoney). While this was a strong selling point as the majority of society did not have the mechanical skill to fix a car, in reality, it was not just the broken piece being thrown out and ending up in landfill somewhere, but also everything else that had gone into the process of making that part in the first place. This included not only procedures at the Ford plant, but also the making of and transportation of parts that were manufactured elsewhere, which as Arnold and Faurote note were far from few- "The bodies, wheels, tires, coil-box units, lamps, drop-forgings, gaskets, hose connections, and a considerable part of the bolts and nuts, are purchased from outside sources of supply" (29) and that isn't even the full list. Another example, the River Rogue plant self-produced the tires for the cars, but used rubber extracted thousands of miles away from the Ford plantation in the Amazon Forest; it is disturbing to think that both the devastation of the rainforest and the potential destination of the tire in a landfill have numerous negative environmental impacts at regional and global scales. Such externalities from the transportation of raw goods to the factory, to the CO2 emissions of the finished, operable car, all play a role in the large connections among economy and ecology.

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The most important material used in the Model T was the steel alloy vanadium steel, which possessed ideal qualities for the performance of the vehicle, but ultimately has an unfavorable environmental impact. For example, while it had a strength of 170ksi compared to the 60ksi of standard steel, producing it also required a 3,000 degree farenheit furnace (Ford Motor History). Regarding the vanadium steel Ford remarks, "It would not be good business to let our whole future to depend upon being able to get vanadium steel. We have worked out a substitute" (Ford, 18). To some extent, Ford recognizes the limited lifespans and availabilities of the materials he uses; however, instead of finding a way to recycle those materials or prepare them for alternative use at the onset of their useable life, he looks to finding a replacement once resources are depleted. Because Ford strived for quality of materials, he actually did not always pick the material that was least expensive because it would be subordinate to the quality he expected. The company 1912 booklet comments,

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"There would be a tremendous manufacturing economy if one good grade of carbon steel were used for all of them and the one simple tempering process employed, that is generally considered sufficient, but in so doing, the wonderful strength, lightweight and enduring qualities of Ford construction, which have been such a vital feature in Ford success, would be sacrificed. Thus Ford Vanadium steel the best and most expensive of any steel known, will continue to be used in the Ford Model T for all strain and load-bearing parts." (38)

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Here, spending extra on quality is probably the best decision because even if vanadium steel is just as toxic and un-biodegradable as any other metal, using the better quality would hopefully extend the lifespan of the car. Even if the metal were to be recycled, it probably wouldn't have been used for a new automobile because "metals are often downcycled" (McDonough and Braungart, 56). For example, the high quality steel is 'recycled' by melting it down with other car parts, including copper from the cables and the paint coatings; these materials lower the durability of the recycled steel.

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Just as Kahn had to adapt his architecture within the automobile industry, the American landscape and society transformed to make way for the car as well. "In 1909, only 8.5% of American roads were classified as surfaced, which usually meant covered with gravel. The remainder were simply dirt paths: dusty in dry weather, muddy tracks in the rain, and creased with frozen ruts in the winter" (Henry Ford and Innovation, 7). There were no interstate highways; therefore, the Model T was first designed for the rugged terrains and unpaved roads of the countryside. Especially after roads were paved, the automobile enabled individual mobility so that people no longer had to rely on public transportation or the horse and carriage. It came to symbolize leisure and liberation. People began to have a "desire for rapid, unfettered mobility; for control of something powerful; and for ownership of something valuable, modern and complex" (Henry Ford and Innovation, 9). The change in lifestyle in the 1920s has resulted in a culture of unsustainable excess of material consumption - 'stuff'. There was a rapid increase in the standard of living that has evolved into a culture fixated on purchasing, discarding, and repurchasing large quantities of machine-made goods. As Orff argues, "We have collectively made a landscape that is a machine for consuming petrochemicals which, in it dispersed state, demands more energy to heat, more gasoline to travel on, and more fertilizer to grow" (193). The growth of the car industry also spurred the expansion of the oil, rubber, and steel industries and road construction. Furthermore, it stimulated real estate development in the suburbs and led to new businesses like gas stations, roadside motels, and drive-thru restaurants.

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