Thinking “green” is the latest mantra repeated over and over again by all car manufacturers. The most usual way of displaying their environmentally conscious approach is to advertise their vehicles’ low CO2 emissions.

Volkswagen, while still selling and developing greener cars, is also implementing a new “Think Blue. Factory.” initiative that aims to make its product plants more environmentally friendly.

The plan calls for the environmental impact of all Volkswagen factories to be reduced by 25 percent until 2018. The German company says this applies especially to energy consumption, waste volumes, air-borne emissions, water consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.

“Through the growing efficiency and productivity of our plants, the Volkswagen brand is already making a key contribution to the achievements of Group strategic targets for 2018. However, we are going a step further: by 2018, we intend to make production at all our plants 25 percent more environmentally compatible,” said Hubert Waltl, Member of the Board of Management of the Volkswagen Passenger Cars brand

VW says that its new U.S. plant at Chattanooga, Tennessee, was the world’s first automotive plant to receive the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification, which means that the factory fulfills the stricter standards for environmentally compatible operation.

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