Sustainability
Circular economy
The world's natural resources are limited. So we're aiming towards becoming a circular business by 2040 – minimising our use of primary resources. We're focused on eliminating waste and pollution, making greater use of recycled material, and remanufacturing and reusing parts.
“If we are to reach our goals, we need to embrace the circular economy.”
Vanessa Butani, Head of Sustainability
A circular Volvo Cars?
Aiming towards circularity by 2040 means we need to act now. And becoming more circular is both good for the planet and our business and means generating more circular revenue to support the decoupling of revenue and primary resource use. We've already begun by mapping out how, by 2025, we can save costs of SEK 1 billion through circular initiatives. And there's a lot more to come. Watch this film to see what circular means for our future.
Design for circularity
Most companies (and people) still participate in a linear economy – you take raw material, make a product, use it, and in the end, throw it out as waste. A circular economy avoids this because absolutely everything gets used – then re-used or recycled.
Design is critical. From the start, products must be created with the intention of being used again, either by us or our suppliers. The products retain their value over time. We make the best use of our resources and eliminate waste.
Recycled materials
One of our circular economy ambitions is to significantly increase the share of recycled and bio-based materials in our cars by 2025.
Ambitions for 2025
25%
Recycled and bio-based plastics
40%
Recycled aluminium
25%
Recycled steel
More remanufacturing
Compared to producing new parts, remanufactured parts use around 85 per cent less raw material and 80 per cent less energy. We currently remanufacture 36 different component groups, including engines, gearboxes, turbo compressors and clutches. In 2022 we saved over 4,800 tonnes of CO₂ by remanufacturing over 33,000 parts.
Less production waste
In 2022, 94 per cent of our global production waste was recycled – so we avoided creating additional carbon emissions and were able to keep valuable material in circulation. By 2030, we're aiming for at least 99 per cent of all our waste to be either reused or recycled.
Recycling
Steel is the most common waste we recycle. In 2020, we recycled more than 176,000 tonnes, avoiding the generation of nearly 640,000 tonnes of CO2.
Our position
Our ambition to be a climate neutral company by 2040 will create many challenges and we want to be transparent throughout this transformation. We want to act responsibly and we want anyone interested in what’s happening here at Volvo Cars to be able to explore our progress and know what we stand for.
You're welcome to access the below resources to learn more about how we approach our responsibilities.