Thinking Blue, Volkswagen en route to reducing environmental impact of production by 25 per cent by 2018.

New Passat rolls out of the environmentally advanced facility at Chattanooga in Tennessee, USA

Volkswagen’s Think Blue initiative has been setting people – at least some of them – thinking in our part of the world, where few think twice before driving an extra mile or digging an extra inch on the road. Earlier this year, they had the ‘desert clean up drive’ and recently, they blue-washed a beach in Dubai. Well, those were just a whiff of what is in store. The new Passat that will hit the Middle East soon will roll out of a new and more environmentally friendly manufacturing facility – at Chattanooga in Tennessee, USA.

The Chattanooga facility is the world’s first automobile factory to achieve platinum Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification, and uses 20 per cent less energy

The Chattanooga facility is the world’s first automobile factory to achieve platinum Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification, and uses 20 per cent less energy than a comparable facility, according to Volkswagen. Key measures at the Chattanooga facility include:

• The use of a painting process without any filler, reducing CO₂ emissions by about 20 per cent.
• By using the most efficient electric motors available, the plant will be able to save around three million kilowatt hours per year
• The world’s first automobile paint shop that uses a waterless separation process for topcoat applications.
• Low water consumption thanks to the use of collected rainwater.
• The first Volkswagen facility to rely entirely on LED technology for outside lighting. Inside, energy saving lamps are controlled by motion sensors and as a whole the plant uses 20 per cent less energy than a comparable facility.

The people’s car manufacturer aims to reduce the environmental impact of all its plants by 25 per cent by 2018.