The Audi Environmental Foundation is blazing new paths for sustainable action. “We are taking Audi’s DNA to the field of environmental protection,” says Rüdiger Recknagel, Director of the Audi Environmental Foundation. The focal points of the foundation's engagement include supporting what are called Greenovation projects. These employ innovative technologies to further the responsible use of natural resources.

The goal of the Audi Environmental Foundation is to inspire in everyone a passion for the environment, the climate, and environmental protection and to give them concrete ideas of how to pitch in. The foundation wants to sensitize people of every age, build knowledge, and make a social contribution toward a livable future. And its commitment starts on the smallest of scales, for example, by initiating plogging events. Plogging is jogging while picking up trash along the way, before disposing of it properly at the end.

The Audi Environmental Foundation was established on December 1, 2009 as a wholly owned, non-profit subsidiary of AUDI AG, with the goal to strengthen social engagement and environmentalism.

GREENOVATION

Linking traditional environmental protection with innovative technologies and leveraging the approaches and insights gained to make a valuable open-source contribution to society.

ENTHUSIASM

Inspiring people, through various projects and formats, with a passion for the environment, encouraging them to participate, and motivating them to pitch in.

RESPONSIBILITY 

Assuming social and ecological responsibility with targeted projects to give back to society and the environment.

Responsibility also entails personal responsibility. That’s why Audi has planted some 100,000 pedunculate oaks at Audi sites since 2008. The trees are part of an international research project investigating, among other things, the interplay between pedunculate oak population density, CO₂ binding potential, and species diversity. In 2002, another plot of land in Mexico, directly adjacent to the Audi site at San José Chiapa, will be planted with pedunculate oaks.

Together with the Technical University of Berlin and other partner institutions, the Audi Environmental Foundation has been developing a smart filter for urban runoff since September of 2020. These so-called URBANFILTERS are intended to help reduce the amount of microplastics polluting the environment through our cities’ wastewater. The filter system has a modular design and uses an intelligent networking concept. It combines parameters such as traffic volume and weather forecasts with information about the deployment and routes of street cleaning vehicles. Initial field and lab tests in early 2022 have demonstrated the efficiency of the system. But there were concrete cooperation requests even during the project’s test phase.

The closed-loop concept also plays a major role in Audi’s “Sustainable extraction of high-tech elements” project. Together with the Freiberg University of Mining and Technology, the Audi Environmental Foundation is researching new means for extracting high-tech metals such as gallium, indium, germanium as well as the rare-earth elements that are currently so essential to the electromobility sector.

The project is addressing the question of how to make mining more sustainable. Unlike conventional mineral extraction methods, this research project follows a microinvasive approach to mining. In a process known as in-situ leaching, valuable metals are transferred to a leaching solution underground by means of microorganisms present there. The metals are then extracted from the resulting metal-rich solution. On-site experts combine this step with direct treatment of the metal-rich solution using membrane technology. This combination of methods enables the sustainable extraction of high-tech elements.

One of the Audi Environmental Foundation’s important future goals is to internationalize its projects and collaborations. To this end, the foundation awards grants abroad, for example to attend the One Young World Summit, as well as increasingly promotes international environmental action.

Together with Audi do Brasil, the foundation supports the NGO Litro de Luz Brasil. Its goal is to give people in remote areas without electricity access to solar lighting. In one project in the Amazon region, three villages were equipped with solar-powered light poles and flashlights to improve the quality of life for the people living there.

Plastic pollution of our oceans is a global problem. Together with CLEAR RIVERS, the Audi Environmental Foundation wants to contribute to the solution. Litter traps in rivers and harbors, such as those already in place in the Brussels-Charleroi Canal, in Budapest, and in Rotterdam, are designed to prevent plastic waste from reaching the sea in the first place. The Mekong River in Vietnam is one of the most polluted rivers in the world. As another milestone in their cooperation, the Audi Environmental Foundation and CLEAR RIVERS are soon launching a new project to collect and recycle plastic waste along the Mekong.

The German-Indian start-up Nunam, which is funded by the Audi Environmental Foundation, turns used batteries into mobile energy storage units. Nunam buys discarded laptop batteries from scrap dealers in the Indian state of Karnataka and uses the battery cells for stationary energy storage systems. These powerbanks can be used to power low-consumption devices such as smartphones or lights. Nunam has also assembled a solar nanogrid from two used Audi e-tron battery modules taken from test vehicles. The system supplies merchants in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh with the electricity they need to work at night. In this way, batteries are given a “second life” before they are recycled, in keeping with the closed-loop concept. The goal is to supply rural areas of India in particular with green power and to expand the project toward mobility concepts based on second-life battery modules. As part of one pilot project, the first e-rickshaws are expected to hit the streets of Bangalore in early 2023 – powered by former e-tron batteries.

The German-Indian start-up Nunam, which is funded by the Audi Environmental Foundation, turns used batteries into mobile energy storage units. Nunam buys discarded laptop batteries from scrap dealers in the Indian state of Karnataka and uses the battery cells for stationary energy storage systems. These powerbanks can be used to power low-consumption devices such as smartphones or lights. Nunam has also assembled a solar nanogrid from two used Audi e-tron battery modules taken from test vehicles. The system supplies merchants in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh with the electricity they need to work at night. In this way, batteries are given a “second life” before they are recycled, in keeping with the closed-loop concept. The goal is to supply rural areas of India in particular with green power and to expand the project toward mobility concepts based on second-life battery modules. As part of one pilot project, the first e-rickshaws are expected to hit the streets of Bangalore in early 2023 – powered by former e-tron batteries.