In the spirit of constant improvement of efficiency in our factory we operate ISO50001 Energy Management System Standards and we have also implemented a number of measures in 2017. Some of these are described below:

Dynamic Air Volume Control:
The paint shop is the biggest consumer in our factory. The comfort ventilation of the hall is provided by 4 air handling units that perform three tasks. They provide fresh air, build overpressure, which is of primary importance for the purpose of clean space, and provide for the heat balance in the building.
Under various environmental parameters and operating circumstances these tasks have different performance demands. By means of a minimal rebuilding of the equipment (expanding the instrumentation) and by re-programming the control unit based on a new logic, we managed to realize air exchange that exactly fit these demands, instead of the former fix channel pressure operation (which goes with almost constant air volume flow.) With this not only the energy demand of the fans decreased significantly but the heat, and consequently the gas consumption in the heating periods as well, due to the lower air exchange rate.

Optimization of the operation time of hydraulic aggregates:
We operate an energy efficiency team at the Kecskemét factory. Each production facility has an own energetics coordinator whose task is to increase the energy efficiency of production equipment in cooperation with the central energy supply department. In the year of 2017, one of these production-related measure was the shutting down of hydraulic aggregates in the body shop outside operation times. We determined its necessity and realized this measure after a site survey with the coordinator.

Lighting modernization:
It is very important for our company to keep up-to-date with regards to technological innovations, so innovation is everywhere on the site from trigenerative energy to lighting systems. For lighting the halls we already use resource-saving LED technology in several halls and we are continually examining how they could be used in special production processes. For this reason, after a number of quality tests last year, we started to use this technology inside the surface testing light tunnel as well.

With the above measures, we reduced the electricity consumption of our plant by 1376 MWh. This equals to the yearly electricity demand of more than 3500 households in Hungary and we thus prevent 502 tons of carbon dioxide to get into the environment each year. The total life cycle (80 years) of 117 oak trees would be required to absorb this carbon dioxide quantity.

As to waste management, Mercedes-Benz Manufacturing Hungary Ltd. considers it a fundamental objective to prevent the generation of waste in the course of production and to constantly reduce the quantities of it. We also aim at recycling our waste to the largest possible extent. In order to realize these goals, we collect waste selectively at the plant with the help of the collecting isles and labeled containers that are accessible on the site. Nearly 100 various types of waste are generated at the plant, which will be handled by audited waste companies with the necessary licenses for waste handling and operations.

From the aspect of waste reduction and re-utilization, on the basis of quantity and cost factors, we chose three kinds of waste: glues, paint shop system washing liquids and the metal-hydroxide sludge forming in the sewage cleaning facility.

In the paint shop, we wanted to reduce the liquid waste containing solving matter from washing the system each time a new color is used on the line by increasing the size of color blocks. Optimizing the production this way we managed to realize a 16,7% rate waste reduction.
By increasing the efficiency of the water eliminating press we managed to increase the dry-matter content of the metal-hydroxide sludge in the course of clearing the technological sewage in the paint shop.
The re-utilization rate of hazardous waste was very low in 2014, due to the waste materials eliminated in the burning facility. In the year 2015, we placed great emphasis on contacting waste managers who have the capacity to handle these types of waste with adequate utilization technologies. We could relatively easily find a company for recycling the materials in the high solving matter content washing liquids, whereas choosing the right handling company for re-using washing liquids with low solving matter content was somewhat more difficult, due to the local circumstances.

The various types of sludge from the sewage clearing facility of the paint shop were used as covering material for the hazardous waste depot. In the case of non-hazardous materials, the quantity of community waste was drastically reduced, as examining the waste it could be proven that a significant part of it was miscellaneous packaging material. We then qualified a large part of the community waste to be mixed packaging waste, so we had to handle only the actually existing community waste by depositing. The mixed packaging waste was forwarded for RDF utilization. These were the most important measures for waste utilization, but we were, of course, considering utilization possibilities for smaller quantity waste as well. We eventually found a way to recycle materials in damaged bumpers, and since April 2016, 100% of the polluted fabric waste material has been re-used.
By September 2017 we managed to achieve a utilization rate of 99.85% in the case of hazardous wastes and 96.37% in the case of non-hazardous waste materials, and we continue to work on further improving these rates in the future.