Review of the event: Planning for the future: how to use our water resources more efficiently

Swiss Cleanwater Group participated at the event entitled "Planning for the future: how to use our water resources more efficiently" organized by the British Chamber of Commerce in Denmark and the European Environment agency.

Different stakeholders presented their viewpoints on how we will need to deal with relevant water issues in the coming years.

Over the next couple of days we will bring a recap of the various presentations, today:

BMW Group: Corporate Sustainability and Water Management

Ursula Mathar, VP for Sustainability and
Environmental Protection, BMW Group

Ursula Mathar, VP for Sustainability and Environmental Protection, BMW Group discussed the driving factors to achieve sustainable mobility in the future. For BMW the 6 key factors that were focused on in their sustainability efforts were:

• Environment
• Urbanization
• Politics and Regulations
• Economic
• Culture
• Customer Expectations

From BMWs point of view, sustainability comes with being a premium brand. It is being driven not only by the first five factors above, but also customer expectations. On all levels sustainability is and integral part of the corporate number one strategy.

Ursula Mathar, then discussed "How can sustainability create innovation so we take it to the next level?". A very interesting viewpoint that places sustainability as a catalyst for creating innovation, and not innovation to create sustainability.

At the BMW Group there are 17 production sites globally - all of which are ISO14001 certified. Focusing on the water aspect of sustainability, BMW looks at how they can reduce water usage and how they process wastewater. At their plant in Landshut, they have implemented a new way of preparing plastics using O2 snow, rather than water and have "closed the circuit" so to say and are successfully reusing water.

At BMW, water consumption has fallen by 30% over the last 5 years per vehicle produced. That is a step in the right direction. At BMW the main water usage has come from the paint shop, which now has more effective ways of using water.