Environmental principles for vehicles and production
Volkswagen has introduced environmental principles for its vehicles and production that apply across the entire Group. They start at product development and also affect construction and the choice of materials. In terms of process-oriented environmental protection, the main focuses - alongside energy efficiency and climate care - are water and wastewater, air and waste.

Reducing water consumption - recycling wastewater
Although large quantities of fresh water are needed for automobile production, valuable drinking water resources can be protected by using advanced technology and closed loops at all plants, reducing water consumption, using rainwater and recycled wastewater, recycling cleaning media and treating wastewater efficiently. Volkswagen has introduced a wastewater management system that has led to significant reductions in the company's water consumption.

Avoiding and recycling waste
In the area of waste management, Volkswagen is continuously working to reduce waste volumes, to mitigate any hazards posed by waste and to increase the proportion of waste that is recycled. To this end, reusable transport packaging is used, unavoidable disposable packaging is optimized, and packaging materials are collected separately, sorted and recycled.

The Volkswagen Group
The Volkswagen Group, with its headquarters in Wolfsburg, is one of the world's leading automobile manufacturers and the largest carmaker in Europe. The Group operates 61 production plants in fifteen European countries and a further six countries in the Americas, Asia and Africa. Around the world, nearly 370,000 employees produce about 26,000 vehicles or are involved in vehicle-related services each working day.