Smartville: A Smart Place

Nestled in between an orchard and a cornfield on 168 acres, near the French town of Hambach, is an extraordinary factory known as ‘Smartville’. The full name for this particular factory is ‘Smartville Energy Centre’ and it is a very energy efficient car factory.

The Smart car was designed with the environment in mind and you can only make an environmentally friendly car from an environmentally friendly factory. Smartville is as globe friendly as a car factory can get- it even includes a nature reserve with rare species of plants and landscaping for hundreds of trees.[pay]

Whilst building Smartville, all materials used in its construction were checked to see if they could potentially harm the environment. As a result, none of Smartville’s buildings contain poisonous CFCs or formaldehyde.

Rainwater that is collected from the roof is retained for use in tempering steel. All other wastewater that drains off the roads and car parks is also retained for specific purposes. Waste water from the factory’s industrial processes and sanitary installations is recycled and purified in the factory’s very own biological cleansing facility for use in the gardens and as a coolant during the production process.

Smartville lets no materials go to waste- any surplus material such as excess powder gets collected and reused. Energy saving is extremely important to Smartville and insulating the buildings helps to retain heat from production, so that they can conserve it and use it later.

Smartville uses no poisonous metals such as lead and cadmium, throughout the entire process of producing a Smart car. Chromium and mercury are also excluded from the development process.

The paints used on a Smart car are solvent free-, which is the first time that any motorcar has been produced this way. If no solvents are used then there is no hazardous waste left over. Smart is also the first car manufacturer in the world to use only powder paints for the steel body. This is ecologically friendly because it means no wastewater. This is recognised as the most environmentally friendly painting technique in the car industry, in addition to which it achieves energy savings of 40%. Any paint that has not been used is collected for reuse.

When a Smart car reaches the end of its life, it can be 95% recycled. It gets returned, dismantled and sorted for recycling. The panels used on Smart cars are made of recyclable plastic and not only that, but are virtually dent resistant and rust free.

Smartville has several sections to it and they are all connected by a conveyor belt. It takes roughly 4 and a half hours to complete and finish a Smart car. Smartville don’t actually manufacture all of the car parts, as they have parts delivered to them by partner companies. It is Smartville’s job to put everything together. This is why it only takes 4 and a half hours to build a Smart car. Finished Smarts are stored in the famous glass towers that can be seen at the factory.

Submitted By:

Anna Sampson[/pay]

Related Articles

• No Related Articles.