Sustainability actions: we’re celebrating 80 years of circularity

Volvo Cars is a leader in the auto industry in sustainability and our ambition is to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040. Embracing the circular economy and improving people’s lives are key elements of this – and have been part of how we do business for a long time. 

Our Head of Sustainability Vanessa Butani says: “To reach our business and sustainability goals, we need to embrace the circular economy.” 

This year we celebrate the 80-year anniversary of our long-standing circularity initiative, remanufacturing spare parts, which we began in 1945. It all started during World War II, when resources were scarce, so we began remanufacturing gearboxes in the Swedish town of Köping. 

“Since then, we’ve grown our ‘reman’ operations,” says Christoffer Mårtensson, who works in our Circular Exchange Parts team. “We now remanufacture more than 25 different component groups. Our exchange system is one of the most extensive in the industry, spanning categories such as engines, gearboxes, air conditioning, electronics, brake and steering components.” 

That’s an impressive list; in fact, if we consider it thoughtfully, we can see that this  initiative is a viable business – which is a critical part of a successful circular economy – it’s where business profitability and sustainability overlap. 

Christoffer says: “Compared to producing new parts, remanufactured parts use around 85 per cent less raw material and 80 per cent less energy. On average, our reman parts cost around 40% less to produce than the corresponding new part. So we’re  enabling our circular economy and reducing environmental impacts, while increasing profitability and securing availability.

“Our fleet is increasingly electrified, so we’re also exploring reman potential for parts such as inverters, on-board chargers, infotainment head units and remanufactured e-machines.” 

The environmental impact of our reman operations is interesting to explore. In 2024 alone, 2,947 tonnes of CO2 was saved by the reuse of aluminium, steel and copper; we remanufactured 22,227 parts and recycled a further 1,256; and more than 9,600 high-voltage batteries were collected for repair, reuse, repurpose and recycling.

What does the circular workflow look like? 
Remanufacturing is basically taking a used part and, instead of scrapping it, we breathe new life into. A remanufactured part may or may not show a level of wear, but in terms of quality and robustness, it’s equivalent to and just as reliable as a brand-new part.  

The process all starts when a customer with car troubles visits a workshop, where a broken part is disassembled and replaced. The broken part (core) is sent to our exchange terminal – where all the cores are collected to keep Volvo original parts within our ecosystem – to be sorted and evaluated for reman potential. 

The sorting and evaluation determine which cores we send on for remanufacturing and which cores we instead recycle. The suitable cores are then renovated to be as good or better than a new spare part. These parts are then ready for our workshops to order when needed for a future customer. And so the cycle continues. 

Driving in circles 
The world’s natural resources are limited. So we’re aiming towards becoming a circular business by 2040. A circular economy maximises resources by designing products for durability, reuse and recycling. 

Our circularity ambitions are all about minimising primary resource use, eliminating  waste and pollution, making greater use of recycled material, and remanufacturing and reusing parts. It’s also important that we generate more circular revenue, to support the decoupling of revenue and primary resource use. 

As a stepping stone towards becoming a circular business by 2040, we’ve set some circular economy ambitions for 2030: 99% of all waste to be either reused or recycled; a 50% average per-car reduction in water use in our own operations; and we want 35% recycled content in new car models. 

Circularity is now an important factor in all early design- and engineering stages of a car’s development. So from the start, we’re considering a Volvo car’s entire life cycle and how to maximise the value delivered throughout that time. When the car’s life cycle ends, the disassembly can provide high quality and quantity raw materials for remanufacturing and recycling. 

Vanessa Butani says: “Volvo Cars has a proud history in sustainability. Our dedicated people across the company are continually finding new ways of minimising primary resource use, eliminating waste and pollution, and using recycled materials. Such initiatives, like remanufacturing and reusing parts, brings us closer to our ambitions while also driving customer and business value. Congratulations to all of our Volvo colleagues who have made this happen for 80 years.”