The worldwide consumption of resources is growing – with negative consequences for the environment and society. Therefore, our goal is to increasingly decouple our consumption of resources from the growth of our production volume. We intend to reduce our use of primary resources per vehicle. In this way, we want to help promote both economic growth and sustainability. That is why we are consistently working to increasingly close material cycles.
We make every effort to achieve a responsible balance between environmental, social and economic goals. That’s why we are pursuing a sustainable, integrated business strategy in which we have also defined clear ambitions, goals, and milestones for the responsible management of resources.
Mercedes-Benz consumes around 4.5 million tons of raw materials each year to manufacture its products. Some of these materials can be categorized as scarce or critical. Our special focus is on continuously reducing the quantities of these raw materials used per vehicle. To this end, we are already pursuing the "Design for Environment" approach during the development of a vehicle. We design our vehicles to be as resource-conserving and environmentally compatible as possible during their entire life cycle.
We are therefore taking on responsibility in terms of both products and production. For example, we are increasingly using secondary materials and renewable raw materials in our vehicles and steadily making our production processes more efficient.
Across all business units and regions, we want to increase transparency regarding the use of secondary raw materials in our products. This particularly applies to materials that we require in large quantities, such as steel, aluminum, and polymers, and to essential raw materials that are used in batteries.
In addition, we aim to return our production waste and end-of-life materials to the material cycle. In order to also reduce our energy and water consumption and waste generation, we are working continuously to make our production processes more efficient and more sustainable. Our vision is to transform our entire value chain into as closed a loop as possible.
