Volvo saved 300 tonnes of aluminium through its remanufacturing activities in 2015

The ‘human-centric’ car company Volvo is striving to optimise the life-cycles of its vehicles while protecting the earth’s resources. The company is working towards boosting the amount of recycled materials (non-metallic as well as metallic parts made of steel or aluminium) in its cars and reducing the quantity of virgin materials. ‘Approximately 95 per cent of the materials in our cars can be recovered and 85 per cent can be recycled,’ said research specialist Axel Edh, of Volvo Car Group at the annual Circular Materials Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Volvo’s remanufacturing activities saw to it that over 1000 tonnes of metal were ‘saved’ last year, of which 300 tonnes were aluminium. The Volvo Exchange System currently covers 46 different spare parts.

According to Edh, some 15 per cent of Volvo Cars’ spare part sales consist of parts from the Volvo Cars Exchange System. He stressed that a remanufactured part requires 85 per cent less raw materials than standard parts.

The carmaker is ‘proud’ to be ‘moving in the right direction’, Edh told the audience. As such, it has set its sights on being ‘at the forefront’ of sustainable product development. ‘And sustainable is synonymous with innovative,’ he suggested. This has led Volvo to declare a new goal for e-mobility, namely to put one million electronic cars (both plug-in and hybrid) on the road by 2025.