Volvo promises to use 25 per cent recycled plastics in cars from 2025

Chinese automaker Volvo has pledged to use 25 per cent recycled plastic in all of its cars from 2025.

Recycled plastics – such as from fishing nets or old bottles in car dashboards or carpets – would not affect safety or quality, Stuart Templar, director for sustainability at Volvo Cars, told the Reuters news agency. “We think this makes business sense,” he said.

“Volvo Cars is committed to minimizing its global environmental footprint,” Hakan Samuelsson, president and CEO of Volvo Cars, which is owned by China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co Ltd, said in a statement.

Volvo has already produced a one-off XC60 plug-in hybrid using recycled parts to illustrate the potential of this raw material reduction. The carpet, for instance, had fibres made from PET plastic bottles, old Volvo car seats were used in sound-absorbing material under the hood, and fishing nets and ropes were used in the tunnel console between the passenger and driver seats.

Volvo said it was in talks with plastics producers to achieve its “ambition that from 2025, at least 25 percent of the plastics used in every newly launched Volvo car will be made from recycled material.”

Volvo sold 570,000 cars last year, with about five per cent of plastics in its cars currently made from recycled materials.