Sustainable cars? Guest lecture on due diligence in global supply chains
Johannes Danz, Sustainability Project Coordinator at Mercedes-Benz AG, gave a guest lecture at the Center for Comparative Politics with a focus on Environmental and Climate Politics.
News from Jun 16, 2023
Johannes Danz, political science graduate and project coordinator for sustainable supply chains, human rights and raw materials at Mercedes-Benz AG, came to the Otto Suhr Institute on June 14, 2023. He presented how his company implements due diligence in the supply chain and then answered the students' critical questions about the past and future of the car industry. The shift to electromobility is bringing about profound changes. In addition to technological challenges, this primarily affects global supply chains. Raw materials such as cobalt, nickel, copper or aluminium are becoming more important. In the presentation it already became clear that the automotive industry is faced with the major task of shaping this change in a fair and ecological way. In the eyes of some participants, this is simply not possible. Even though the legalization of due diligence is increasing and the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Law will be supplemented in the future by a series of new regulations at the EU level, in their view there are no "sustainable" cars. Representatives of the Fachschaftsinitiative (FSI) accordingly described the event as a "joke". Citing the German Environment Agency, they pointed out that "behind the green makeup (hide) 20% of all emissions in Germany, which are produced primarily by car traffic". Although the FSI's sources were not the most up-to-date, they still served as a good start for a controversial discussion.