Volvo just made a huge recycled plastic promise
Volvo plans to dramatically increase the green credentials of its cars, promising to use at least 25-percent recycled plastics from 2025. The push will see the Swedish automaker offset its use of new plastic – both in the cabin and elsewhere in the construction of its vehicles – by introducing a greater percentage of reused materials.
It's not a small goal, either. The typical car uses approximately 332 pounds of plastics, in fact, according to the American Chemistry Council. While the proportion of plastics to overall weight will of course vary depending on automaker and the type of vehicle itself, that's a big chunk of petrochemical-based material in every car.
Volvo's ambition is to have "at least" a quarter of the plastics it uses in every newly-launched car to be made from recycled materials in some way. It won't be able to do that alone, mind. Instead, it'll need to bring its suppliers onboard with the idea, so that its supply-chain of fabric, trim, and other components meet those minimum standards.
To show just how it could be done, Volvo has wheeled out a specially-created version of the XC60 SUV that swaps what would typically be virgin plastic for recycled alternatives. In the cabin, for example, the seats use PET fibers from plastic bottles. The carpet uses more of those fibers, along with a recycled cotton mix that Volvo sourced from offcuts supplied by clothing manufacturers.
The tunnel console, meanwhile, uses fibers and plastics from old fishing nets and maritime ropes. Even old Volvo parts have been given a new purpose. The XC60 uses car seats from its older vehicles to make sound-absorbing insulation for under the hood.
The resulting SUV, Volvo points out, is indistinguishable from its regular production counterpart, despite being a lot more environmentally-friendly. "Environmental care is one of Volvo's core values and we will continue to find new ways to bring this into our business," Håkan Samuelsson, President and CEO of Volvo Cars, said of the experiment. "This car and our recycled plastics ambition are further examples of that commitment."
It comes on the heels of Volvo's announcement last month that it would end the use of single-use plastics across all of its premises and events by the end of next year. As for powertrains, every new Volvo will be electrified in some way from 2019. Volvo is predicting fully electric cars to comprise half of its global sales by 2025.
Though it's certainly the most aggressive commitment to recycled materials in automotive production, it's not the first time we've seen such efforts. Back in 2012, Ford announced it would use recycled plastic bottles for components in the Focus Electric, having already experimented with using dandelion roots to make rubber for interior trim.