With my girlfriend busy earning her MBA at the University of Michigan, I find myself making several trips a year to the greater Detroit metropolitan area. She and I have taken in many of the local attractions (there's more to Michigan than UM football) and last weekend we visited the world's largest green roof. Ford Motor Company's historic flagship assembly plant, The Rouge - named for the Rouge River that runs by the plant - is famous for creating the industrial model of vertical integration is now setting the standard for green industry.

The Ford Motor Company is quite proud of the many green innovations this plant is putting to use including incorporating sky lights into the roof to provide natural lighting on the assembly floor, planting ivy to grow up the side of building to reduce energy use, using more environmentally friendly waterbased paints on their vehicles, but the enormous green roof is certainly the most impressive - and I'm not just saying that as a river guy. The 454,000 square foot sedum green roof covers the F-150 pickup truck assembly plant. Other notable stormwater innovations at the plant are the company's use of porous pavement in its parking lots and several rain gardens and plantings in the area all help prevent hundreds of thousands of gallons of stormwater and snowmelt a year from running off the premise and into the Rouge River.

Ford has also made these green innovations the focal point of its assembly plant tour. Industry around the world could stand to learn a lot from the actions Ford is taking to protect its local water resources. In a time when the US auto industry faces an uncertain future it's good to know that Ford sees profits from trying to green its assembly works. The Rouge River and Lake Erie stand to benefit greatly from these green innovations.