Environmental Protection; The Water Management Plan - Volkswagen PASSAT - YEAR 2001 Manual

Environmental Protection

The water management plan

Environmental protection is a matter of
fundamental importance. Each and everyone of
us should strive to protect the environment
wherever possible, day by day. You are required
to think pro-environmentally when you repair
and service vehicles. And we must do likewise in
vehicle manufacture.
To demonstrate our commitment to in-plant
environmental protection throughout all stages
of the vehicle production process through to
delivery of the finished product, we will be
dealing time and again with the topic of
environmental protection in the next Self-Study
Programmes.
Our customer have high expectations of our
products in several respects:
reliability, convenience, quality and, not least,
environmental compatibility. Firstly, the vehicle
itself should pollute the environment as little as
possible. This means raising fuel economy,
reducing pollutant emissions in exhaust gases
and ensuring a high degree of recyclability of
the individual components of a car at the end of
its life cycle. Secondly, our customers also expect
their vehicles to be made in a production facility
that meets stringent environmental protection
standards.
Volkswagen can look back on a long tradition of
protecting the environment. When it built its first -
and, to date, largest - plant in Wolfsburg,
Volkswagen even then thought about ways of
using the natural resource of water as
economically as possible for example.
Volkswagen currently circulates and reprocesses
more than 95 percent of process water within the
plant.
The amount of fresh potable water which
Volkswagen annually feeds into its circulation
system from external sources accounts for less
than five percent of total volume.
10
The water management plan for Wolfsburg plant
Process water retention tank
3
1,500,000m
to landfill
Process water
treatment
Waste water
treatment plant
(biological)
Mittelland
Canal
Drinking water
procurement (from
the Harz mountains)
Measuring station
Filtration
press