31 Mar 2021
The new Audi A3: Giving plastic bottles a new lease of life
Aligned with Audi’s sustainability promise, the brand is engineering new solutions to use more sustainable and recyclable materials in the new fourth generation Audi A3.
The new Audi A3 features seat upholstery made from recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles transformed into yarn that results in fabrics that have the same quality standards as conventional textile upholstery in terms of look and feel. This recycled textile is used in different parts of the Audi A3, mainly the seating system and carpet. Other components of the car interior are also made of secondary raw materials such as the insulating materials and absorbers, the side panel trims of the luggage compartment, and the loading floor and the mats.
With this move, Audi aims to pump up the brand’s green efforts by making its fleet more sustainable and recyclable in the coming years, without compromising on quality. Customers will continue to enjoy premium products with the high level of quality they are used to.
Audi is not only focusing on conserving resources when designing and building its vehicles but also aims to construct them in a way that they can be dismantled quickly, simply, and recycled and reused. The seat upholstery currently requires an adhesive to connect the lower and upper layers which poses a challenge to recycling. To move closer to the brand’s sustainability goal, further innovation is required. “It is our goal to make the seat upholstery completely from unmixed material so that it can be recycled again. We are no longer very far away from this,” says Ute Grönheim, who is in charge of material development in the textiles division at Audi.