Biodiversity is vital for human life. Protecting biodiversity therefore goes much further than mere nature conservation. Alongside climate change, it is one of the global tasks of the modern age. Porsche recognizes this and is actively committed to preserving biodiversity at its sites
Evaluating and managing biodiversity
Porsche’s engagement here focuses on its sites and their immediate environment in particular. The company wants to protect the occupied and unoccupied natural landscape and to minimize its own environmental footprint. In doing so, Porsche wishes to maintain biodiversity, allow nature to operate and find its own balance, and secure the future capacity of nature and the landscape to recover. Porsche therefore pays particular attention to these aspects.
In order to better evaluate and manage biodiversity at its own production sites, Porsche uses an innovative biodiversity tool developed by the Volkswagen Group. Since 2021, Porsche has used defined biodiversity criteria to study its Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen site. The tool is being optimized continuously. By 2025, the company aims to define binding biodiversity targets in connection with its vision of a zero-impact factory.
Near-natural company grounds
In 2021, Porsche turned an area of 2,000 square meters into green recreational space for its employees and the neighbor - hood as part of its drive to create near-natural company grounds at the Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen site. The cultivated pastures and native plants also serve as a habitat for insects.
In 2020, in order to conserve nature and species at the Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen site, 13 bee colonies, each with some 50,000 bees, were introduced to a naturally grown fruit orchard located within the perimeter. Porsche introduced a further five colonies there in 2021. In addition, another bee site was established in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen. Consequently, there are ten new bee colonies established at the edge of the woods between the central workshops and the former Bosch grounds.
The plant in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen is the second site belonging to Porsche to get its own bee colonies —since 2017, some three million honeybees have occupied the off-road site at the Leipzig plant, which has been returned to nature.
Porsche is also committed to protecting biodiversity around the Research and Development Center in Weissach. A guide was developed to this end together with experts in the fields of land - scape planning and species conservation. This gives concrete recommendations for future planting and the creation of green spaces. The aim of the transformations is to create a wildlife corridor leading to the local natural structures and species outside the Research and Development Center. Special attention is paid here to especially protected species of wild bee. To improve their conditions of existence, wild bee pastures were created in selected green spaces. Other measures in the project to create near-natural company grounds are in the pipeline. In this way, biodiversity and habitat variety will continue to be promoted at the Weissach site.
Furthermore, the Leipzig production site’s grazing concept is unique in the automotive industry. Back in 2002, Porsche Leipzig introduced Exmoor ponies and wild oxen to 132 hectares of natural space there. The natural space is also home to Finnsheep and numerous wild animals.
