Geely bans single-use plastics across facilities, targets to remove it from supply chain by 2025

China’s leading automaker Zhejiang Geely Holding Group (Geely Holding)  is marking the 51st World Earth Day by banning all single-use plastics from within its facilities and seeks to remove them from its supply chain by 2025.

The OEM says as a responsible industrial and technology group with a global presence, Geely Holding will aim to eradicate the usage of single-use plastics within the Group whilst further championing the use of alternative and recycled materials in its brand portfolio. Starting today, Geely Holding says it will also seek wherever possible to use sustainable materials in its subsidiary brands supply chains and further the use of renewable energy within the Group. To date, the Group has identified nearly 9 million pieces of single-use plastic that will be removed from facilities in due course.

The company says it has already made significant progress in recent years in the use of recycled materials through coordination by its newly-developed centralised logistics centers in Xiangtan, Hangzhou Bay, and Yuyao. As a result, it has already moved to introduce entirely recyclable packaging materials for all major components such as engines and transmissions for logistics purposes. At the same time, the recoverability rate of automotive materials within Geely Auto vehicles has reached 96.8 percent, and recyclability rate reached 94.4 percent, an increase of 0.7% and 4.5% respectively over the previous year.

Focus on renewable energy
Geely says to further reduce reliance on non-renewable energy sources, it has moved to introduce photovoltaic solar panels throughout its production facilities. The solar panels have already reached 100 megawatts with an annual power generation of 100 million kilowatt hours, reducing more than 10,000 tons of CO2 emissions.

Furthermore, taking a step towards sustainability in China, batteries from older out of service Geely electric vehicles will be recycled and reused in Geely power grids increasing the efficiency of the grid. By 2022, the expected production capacity is expected to reach 300MW.

Geely Holding established Cao Cao Mobility in 2015 with the goal of utilising electric vehicles as the sole mode of transport and to issue usher in a new generation of green mobility. To date, Cao Cao has been made available in more than 54 cities across China and by the end of 2019 had served over 167 million consumers with total kilometer journeys reaching 1.48 billion kilometres, saving over 210,000 tons of CO2 over traditional gasoline vehicles. Cao Cao is now expanding internationally with the service undergoing trials in the Paris region and plans to expand to other European cities in due course.

Electrification across brands
Geely Holding says it has also supported London Electric Vehicle Taxi Company (LEVC) with continued investment reaching over 500 million GBP (Rs 4,530 crore) and inter-Group technology sharing. Since its launch in 2018, LEVC has seen sales of more than 4,000 zero emission capable taxis, leading to a saving of over 17.5 million litres of fuel and reducing CO2 emissions by 30,000 tonnes. The OEM says the latest generation of the TX electric taxi has also reduced nitrogen oxide by 99.5 percent when compared to the original diesel model.

Among the Geely Holding brand portfolio, Volvo Cars has announced the ambition to be a climate neutral company by 2040, and reduce its lifecycle carbon footprint per vehicle by 40 percent by 2025. In addition, both Volvo Cars and Polestar have already been making greater use of sustainable materials within their vehicles such as using sustainably sourced wool materials in the case of the Volvo XC90.

The recently unveiled Polestar Precept concept highlights the company’s continued desire to explore new materials further limiting the environmental impact of their future models. Both brands are committed to electrifying their product ranges with Volvo aiming to sell 1 million electrified cars by 2025 and drawing 50 percent of their yearly sales from fully electric vehicles.

Lotus Cars has also made its commitment to an electrified future with the launch of the first British all-electric hypercar, the Lotus Evija, which boasts over 2,000 brake horse power, a range of over 400km, a weight of just 1680kg, and a top speed of 320kph. The Evija will be available in a limited production run of 130 units and will serve as a technology flagship for other future electrified Lotus products as the brand embarks on its journey to carbon neutrality.

An Conghui, president and CEO, Geely Holding Group said: “Humanity’s continued existence depends upon healthy ecosystems. Geely Holding has always aimed to be a responsible member of society by providing sustainable mobility solutions and producing vehicles in a sustainable manner that benefits all of society. From today, we will take our green policies to a new level, including investing only in companies that share our vision for long term sustainability.”

Geely Holding has produced and sold more than 2 million vehicles globally in 2019 and currently employs over 120,000 people internationally. Across its portfolio of brands, the Geely Holding Group has over 40 manufacturing and assembly plants, 9 R&D centres, and 9 design centres across North America, Europe, China, and South-East Asia.