Editor/Meng Wei
Design/stone
When I was a child, empty beer bottles were recycled by manufacturers. Slowly, with the development of technology, the cost of making new bottles began to be lower than the cost of recycling at some point, and brewers were no longer keen on recycling old bottles.
In the past, for some enterprises, cost was more important than sustainability. Today, climate warming has become one of the biggest problems on earth, and all the well-known brands we are familiar with have returned to the "frugal" route one by one.
Burger King announced that by 2025, 100% of the packaging will come from renewable, recycled or certified resources. Adidas released 100% recyclable high-performance running shoes early. In Aarhus, Denmark, there will even be a "recycling house" completed this year, and 90% of its building materials can be dismantled and reused or resold without losing value.
These are the most typical cases of circular economy.
Since1990s, "circular economy" has gradually become one of the most used words in business, and its core lies in recycling, reducing waste and creating sustainability. The automobile industry, which is famous for its high cost, is actually one of the most profitable industries in this new environmental protection revolution. Everything from tires to body shells is a perfect product that can be recycled, remanufactured and reused.
Different from sandwich boxes and running shoes, the average number of auto parts is about 30,000 and the weight is nearly 2 tons, so the complexity is self-evident. Therefore, in the report of the World Economic Forum "Driving Ambition: Business Case of Circular Economy in Automobile Industry", it is considered that the automobile industry is still in the primary stage of circular economy.
Circle the profit pool
According to Accenture, a consulting firm, from now until 2030, the development of circular economy in the automobile industry represents a huge market with a potential value of 4. 1 trillion euros.
The International Labour Office predicts that this transformation can create 6 million jobs worldwide, and related enterprises can replace the traditional linear economic model of "manufacturing, using and throwing away" through the circular model of "extracting, manufacturing, using, scrapping and recycling".
Through recycling, automobile companies can also explore new value pools beyond the limitations of existing business models.
Each car can earn 15-20 times the sales price in the whole life cycle. In modular vehicle design, production is the biggest cost, but the profit can be 1.5-4 times in the maintenance stage and 2-5 times in the scrap recovery stage.
The expansion of the future profit pool mainly comes from the new income flow and the reduction of the cost of the whole value chain recovery plan.
Income mainly comes from objective services, such as vehicle ordering, leasing, on-demand service and MaaS (Travel as a Service). The improvement of recyclable design and recycling technology will also greatly improve the value of discarded materials.
On the other hand, by increasing the quality recycled materials of scrapped cars, the procurement cost can be effectively reduced; The manufacturing cost can be reduced through the ultra-standardization of modules; Through R&D investment and scale effect, such as low-carbon materials and recycling technology, the investment cost in key technical fields can be finally reduced.
Secondary materials are preferred.
According to the analysis of McKinsey & Company, by 2040, 60% of the total vehicle life cycle emissions will come from materials and manufacturing, and the remaining 40% will come from logistics, disposal and use. Therefore, the automobile industry will have to concentrate on reducing its impact on the environment in the manufacturing stage.
Skoda, a Czech automobile manufacturer, is working closely with recyclers and suppliers to reduce the use of primary materials and extend the service life of old materials.
In the Czech production base, they have achieved zero landfill of production waste, which means that all the waste in the production process has been reused in different forms. By 2030, all three factories in the Czech Republic will operate with zero emissions, and the production plants in India will also achieve zero emissions completely in 2025.
The company is also studying various environmental protection interior materials, such as rice husk, hemp, cork and coconut fiber, and has launched a pilot project-reusing waste glass of automobiles in the manufacturing process. In the paint workshop, they use ground limestone to absorb residual paint particles, thus eliminating the excessive demand for water resources in a process called "dry separation".
Are you online? In KODA Enya IV, the seat cover is made of recycled PET bottles.
Getting rid of the typical linear economy is not a new idea. In addition to Skoda, BMW is also striving to "become the most sustainable car company in the world".
The Munich-based manufacturer demonstrated a completely recyclable i Vision cycle model at the IAA Mobile Communication Conference in 20021year, which is almost the ideal appearance of a "recycling car".
Its design relies on 100% recyclable materials, including old materials and renewable materials. The body surface is made of secondary aluminum, the tires are made of certified natural rubber, and the instrument panel comes from 3D printing. BMW's concept of sustainable development is deeply rooted in the core part of this concept car-it avoids the adhesive connection and composite materials in the vehicle structure, but chooses ropes, nails and quick-release fasteners for easy decomposition and recycling.
Bmw I vision announcement
Bmw spokesman Benedikt Fischer stressed that the company is trying to reduce the use of primary materials. He said: "We hope to achieve overall sustainable development in all aspects and greatly increase the share of secondary materials in automobiles. Through the' secondary priority' method, the share of recycled and reused materials will steadily increase to 50%. "
They also started a pilot project with BASF, a chemical company, and Alba Group, a recycling company, to reduce the use of primary plastics.
In 20021year, the LandShutlight Metal Foundry of BMW Group began to purchase aluminum produced by solar energy. The factory uses inorganic sand cores, and there is almost no emission during casting.
Ford has also set medium-term goals. By 2025, its factories in North America and Europe will use 20% recycled and renewable plastics in the design of new cars, and the factory targets in China and Turkey are 65,438+00%. According to the Detroit giant's 2022 sustainable development report, they will also use the closed-loop system to manufacture the best-selling F-series trucks. At present, Ford is the world's largest closed-loop aluminum recycling car manufacturer.
It should be noted that most of the actions of these automakers are limited to places with strict regulatory requirements.
Instructions for recycling scrapped vehicles
The automobile industry is an important consumer of natural resources. According to the data of Amundi Institude, this industry accounts for about 80% of the total rubber consumption, 25% of the total aluminum consumption and 65,438+05% of the total steel consumption.
Due to the extensive use of natural resources and high recycling potential, the European Union has formulated ELV (Scrap Automobile) for European automobile manufacturers around the recyclability, reusability and recyclability of automobiles and their components. According to the vehicle weight, 95% materials in passenger cars and trucks must be reused or recycled.
At present, recycling is promoted by laws and regulations in most countries and regions.
In China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Commerce issued the Notice on Printing and Distributing the Pilot Implementation Plan of the Extended Producer Responsibility System for Automobile Products in 20021year. Through the pilot, by 2023, the recycling rate of scrapped cars will reach 75%, the recycling rate of cars will reach 95%, and the recycling rate of key parts will not be less than 5%.
The vehicle recycling law in Japan and South Korea has been 15 years or more. In Japan, the recycling ratio of scrapped cars is 75%-80% by weight, and that of South Korea is close to 90%. At the same time, India also launched a scrapping framework similar to the EU ELV in August 20021. In the United States, there is no relevant federal law, and only a few States have legislation and requirements on vehicle recycling.
Some interest groups even hope that these laws can go further and push the automobile industry from an "open loop" recycling policy (allowing materials to be converted into other products) to a "closed loop" policy (converting materials into new versions of original products).
(Source: Car Brain)
In the suburbs of Paris, Renault Group operates the first circular economy automobile factory in Europe-the factory.
In a workshop of the factory, workers renovate 150 old cars every day, from mechanical parts to painting. Within a week, these cars looked like new ones, and then they were sold. In another building, 200 workers remanufacture more than 1600 auto parts by recycling materials.
Fran? Ois everard, head of Renault Refactory project? Ois Evrard) said: "By using the refurbished materials of old engines, we can not only produce engines with the same quality requirements as new engines and gearboxes, but also provide customers with products that are 30% cheaper than new ones by reducing the cost of the value chain."
According to the report of the World Economic Forum, the impact of circular economy on the potential income of scrap car recycling and material processing can not be underestimated, and it can be increased from about 200-500 euros per car to about 8,000-13,000 euros.
In 2020, Renault will build its factory in Frings, France into the first remanufacturing factory in Europe.
Put an end to barn effect
Gillian Tett, a columnist of the Financial Times, first put forward the Silo Effect on 20 15, that is, all departments of an enterprise lack communication, work independently like a barn and have no horizontal coordination mechanism.
The same is true of circular economy. Costs and revenues are usually distributed among different value chain participants and at all stages of the life cycle. Everyone in the whole value chain needs cooperation and transparency.
Within Renault Group, there has emerged an independent department that aims at circular economy solutions and serves the whole group.
In June 2022, the reformed Renault Group announced its reorganization into five different business departments. In addition to basic electric vehicles, fuel vehicles, hybrid vehicles, sports cars and financial services, there is also a circular economy sector, and the future is neutral.
The department is committed to providing closed-loop solutions for the whole automobile life cycle, maintaining the value of automobile parts and materials for as long as possible, and enabling the industry to achieve a higher recovery rate of automobile materials when producing new cars. The goal is to achieve a turnover of 2.3 billion euros with an investment of about 500 million euros by 2030.
Stellantis also announced plans to start its circular economy business unit to achieve carbon neutrality in 2038. The goal of this multinational group is to make the department generate about 2 billion euros in revenue, and it is planned to launch a "circular economy center" in Italy in 2023.
Luca de Mayo, CEO of Renault Group, founded the circular economy department.
202 1, many companies started the Catena-X project.
It is an extensible ecosystem in which automobile manufacturers and suppliers, dealer associations and equipment suppliers, including suppliers of applications, platforms and infrastructure, can participate equally.
BASF, BMW, Henkel, Mercedes-Benz, SAP Software Company, Schaeffler Group, Siemens and the IT departments of Deutsche Telekom, T-Systems, Volkswagen and ZF * * * jointly established Cofinity-X, aiming at accelerating the operation and adoption of Catena-X in the whole automobile industry, and operating an open application market, providing products and services, so that all participants in the ecosystem can work efficiently.
Future customers will be able to access applications and services to implement use cases in the automotive value chain, such as carbon dioxide and environmental, social and governance (ESG) monitoring, traceability, circular economy or business partner data management. In the whole supply chain, starting from raw materials, parts are tracked at any time, and the whole cycle is completed through recycled parts. Information about the condition of parts can be displayed transparently between suppliers and customers for correct reuse.
Dutch startup Circularise helps enterprises to track materials and products, with the purpose of verifying their sources, certificates and carbon dioxide footprints, bringing more targeted recycling methods and improving the quantity and quality of secondary materials.
The company is cooperating with various car manufacturers. In a past project, Circularise helped Porsche establish the traceability of plastics and ensure that the brand used sustainable materials in its products. They also experimented with other materials, including aluminum, some steel products, paints and coatings.
Can the battery really achieve a closed loop?
In this revolution of circular economy, there is no doubt about the environmental benefits of electric vehicles, but the lithium-ion batteries that power them have always been "elephants in the room".
By the end of 20021,China's existing and planned lithium-ion battery recycling capacity is more than three times that of the United States. But at present, only about 30%-40% of battery materials are recycled.
In Europe and America, one of the most striking enterprises in the field of electric vehicle batteries is Redwood Materials in Nevada, which was founded in 20 17 by Jeffrey Straubel, former chief technology officer of Tesla. Redwood Materials has established recycling cooperation with Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo.
Li-Cycle is a Canadian company, founded by two former engineering consultants on 20 16, which uses environmental protection technology to recycle lithium-ion batteries.
Northvolt company in Sweden combines battery recycling with manufacturing. The company was founded in 20 15 by Peter Carlsson, former head of Tesla's supply chain. Since 20 17, it has acquired nearly $8 billion in equity and debt. Northvolt aims to use 50% recycled materials in battery production by 2030, recycle about 70,000 tons of batteries by 2025 and recycle 300,000 tons of batteries by 2030.
In May 2022, the Norwegian battery recycling factory Hydrovolt officially started commercial operation, and it is also the largest battery recycling factory for electric vehicles in Europe.
At the end of February, Mercedes-Benz announced in China that it had signed a memorandum of cooperation with Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd., Hunan Bangpu Cycle Technology Co., Ltd. and Meg Co., Ltd. to jointly carry out the closed-loop recycling project of power batteries.
In the future, the retired power batteries of Mercedes-Benz will be handed over to GEM and Bump, and key raw materials such as nickel, cobalt, manganese and lithium will be recovered through recycling technology, and then re-supplied to the supply chain of Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. to produce new Mercedes-Benz batteries.
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