BMW 2005 Annual Report Download - page 173

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25
Combining success and responsibility.
Being successful. Always living up to the claim of performing better. A tradition of setting
standards with own solutions: for the BMW Group, this also applies to sustainability.
Ever since establishing an environmental protection unit in 1973 (the first in the automobile
industry worldwide), the BMW Group has resolutely pursued an overall approach. For the
Company, sustainability management means using resources efficiently, recognising risks
and taking opportunities, acting responsibly towards society and thus enhancing reputation.
In South Africa, for example, where the HIV virus is particularly widespread, the BMW Group
supports infected employees and their families with all the necessary drugs and other
measures. The comprehensive health programme not only makes life easier for those in-
fected, but also enables them to continue to work at the BMW Group. Another continent,
another example: in the Leipzig plant, the BMW Group’s youngest production location,
even the exhaust air from the factory halls is used. Twenty so-called heat wheels with 60 to
70 percent efficiency recover the heat from the exhaust air and use it to heat the fresh air,
thereby helping to significantly reduce heating energy and emissions of CO2. The BMW
plant in Spartanburg, USA, uses methane gas from a nearby public landfill site to generate
energy. Up to 25 percent of the plant’s energy requirements are met by this gas from the
decomposition of biological waste, which comes to the plant by a 15-kilometre pipeline.
This system saves around 72,000 tons of CO2a year – a quantity corresponding to approxi-
mately 5,600 trips around the equator by car. Since 1980 the average water consumption
per automobile produced in the entire BMW Group has been reduced by more than 80 per-
cent – partly as a result of particularly environment-friendly powder-based clear paint tech-
nology. Analysts from the environmental agency Oekotrend confirm that the BMW Group
has the most environmentally compatible automobile production in the industry.
All this reduces costs, eliminates risks, enhances brand image and creates lasting values –
ecologically and economically. Values that are also required by the independent sustainability
indexes. Thus, the BMW Group is the only company in the automobile industry to be repre-
sented in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the seventh time in succession. It is also
listed as industry leader in the Corporate Responsibility Ranking by the Munich rating agency
Oekom and in the FTSE4GoodEurope50, which means that independent experts recog-
nise the unusual strength of the BMW Group in sustainability matters.