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A truck straight off the factory assembly line may not be quite as new as it seems. One-third of the vehicle's total weight consists of recycled metals. At least this is the case with Volvo Trucks. The Swedish manufacturer's production system embraces the recycling of old trucks, whereby old becomes new in a sustainable process that benefits both economy and ecology.
The gate slides up slowly and a 2002 Volvo FH 460 Euro 3 rolls into the workshop. The truck has covered about a million kilometres and its active days are now over. Here at the Volvo Truck Center just outside Göteborg, trucks like this are dismantled down to their last nuts and bolts and their materials recycled.
"The biggest advantage of this approach, from both environmental and personal perspectives, is that the materials live on," says sales representative Mikael Olofsson as he surveys the workshop and the truck that is about to be stripped down to its smallest components.
The newly arrived truck will continue to be useful. Its best parts will be sold on the used vehicle market. All materials removed from the truck that cannot be sold will be put into containers marked separately for iron, aluminium, brass, copper, plastic, combustible and so on. All parts that are too worn out will be sent away for melting or incineration, to be re-used in the form of new products or district heating. Nothing goes to landfill.
Volvo Trucks works hard to reduce the company's environmental footprint, and has applied a carefully thought-out recycling strategy since the mid-1990s.
"We have to consider the environment, our resources and future generations," says Volvo Trucks' environmental affairs director Lars Mårtensson. "What is more, there are sound financial reasons for the customer to recycle the truck. We try to aid that process as much as possible, for instance by providing detailed instructions with each truck on how it is to be recycled."
