Let there be light

The Audi Environmental Foundation has completed another chapter in its ongoing partnership with Litro de Luz to bring sustainable lighting to communities in the Amazon without permanent access to electricity.

This year, three more communities located in the Amazon received sustainable lighting from the collaboration, with nearly 600 residents of the Santa Izabel, São Francisco de Aruaú and Nova Esperança do Apuaú communities on the banks of the Rio Negro and its tributaries directly benefiting.

This latest action continued the work which began in 2022 when the Audi Environmental Foundation first partnered with Litro de Luz, an international organisation operating across 15 countries to provide sustainable lighting to people without access to electricity. This first collaboration saw some 200 riverside communities in the Amazon region receive 30 solar posts and more than 150 lanterns, bringing electric light to these areas for the first time. Some 650 residents of Nova Canaã, Nova Jerusalém and Lindo

Amanhecer were directly impacted by the initiative which was sponsored by Audi’s Environmental Foundation, with volunteers from Audi do Brasil and Litro de Luz helping to install the lights.

The following year, around 40 volunteers from Audi do Brasil were again working with local communities, this time on the southern coast of São Paulo where, alongside colleagues from the NGO Litro de Luz, 140 energy solutions (lamps and solar energy poles) were distributed or installed in the cities of Cananeia and Ilha do Cardoso.

Last year it was the  Xingu region that benefitted from the partnership, which, when combined with this year’s work means that more than 2400 people have been positively impacted by the work.

“We are very pleased with the results of our partnership with Litro de Luz,” says Rüdiger Recknagel, General Director of the Audi Environmental Foundation, a not-for-profit 100 percent subsidiary of AUDI AG that was founded Ian 2009 and works on numerous sustainability, social and economic projects worldwide. 

“In recent years [the initiative] has already benefited thousands of people with limited access to basic resources,” he says.

Like most good ideas, the concept is simple and the technology used, developed by Litro de Luz, is robust and sustainable. Three lighting solutions are employed, made up of solar lanterns, solar posts and indoor lighting. The solar lantern has a PVC structure, a PET bottle, a battery, LED bulbs and is a size that allows it to be carried at night, while the solar post is assembled with a high-performance, low-maintenance lithium battery and positioned in strategic public places. Both use solar panels for charging and, in the case of the posts, they remain lit all night, with automatic daytime charging. The internal lighting is made up of an LED bulb, solar panel, battery and control and the residents themselves are involved in the installation process to build familiarity with the system. In addition, local ambassadors are trained in the communities so that contact with the NGO is permanent and the lighting units receive the necessary care during use. In addition to maintenance, when the batteries lose their capacity and usability, they are returned for recycling and Litro de Luz simply replaces them.

This ongoing lighting initiative is just one of the many projects the Audi Environmental Foundation is involved with internationally, from helping to clean the waterways of places as diverse as Romania and Thailand, to clever solutions for repurposing EV batteries to provide power and even cheap transportation in emerging communities.