Geely banning single-use plastics in all its facilities

The Zhejiang Geely Holding Group marked the recent 51st World Earth Day by banning all single-use plastics from within its facilities and seeking to remove them from its supply chain by 2025. The Hangzhou-based group will champion the use of alternative and recycled materials in its brand portfolio.

“From today, Geely Holding 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 nine million pieces of single-use plastic that will be removed from facilities in due course,” the company said in a statement.

Geely Auto, the company’s eponymous Hong Kong-listed carmaker, has made progress in recent years in the use of recycled materials through coordination by its newly-developed centralised logistics centres in Xiangtan, Hangzhou Bay and Yuyao in China.

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%, and recyclability rate reached 94.4%, an increase of 0.7% and 4.5% respectively over the previous year.

To further reduce reliance on non-renewable energy sources, Geely Auto has moved to introduce photovoltaic solar panels throughout its factories. Geely’s solar panels have reached 100 megawatts with an annual power generation of 100 million kilowatt hours, reducing more than 10,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

Also, batteries from out of service Geely EVs will be recycled and reused in power grids. By 2022, the expected production capacity is expected to reach 300 megawatts.

“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,” said An Conghui, president and CEO of Geely Holding.

In a press release, Geely stated its green initiatives across the group. Launched in 2015 in China, the CaoCao electric ride hailing service is now available in over 54 cities across the country. By the end of 2019, it had recorded 1.48 billion km, saving over 210,000 tonnes of CO2 versus petrol-powered cars. There are plans to introduce CaoCao in Europe, with trials in the Paris region underway.

The London Electric Vehicle Taxi Company (LEVC) is also owned by Geely, and the Chinese company has invested over 500 million pounds in it so far. Since its 2018 launch, LEVC has seen sales of more than 4,000 electric cabs, leading to savings of over 17.5 million litres of fuel and 30,000 tonnes of CO2, it’s claimed. The latest generation TX electric taxi has also reduced nitrogen oxide by 99.5% compared to the original diesel black cab.

Over in Sweden, Volvo has already announced its ambition to be a climate neutral company by 2040, and reduce its lifecycle carbon footprint per vehicle by 40% by 2025. Both Volvo and Polestar are committed to electrifying their product ranges with the mainstream brand aiming to sell one million electrified cars by 2025, or 50% of annual sales from full EVs. More on the new Volvo XC40 Recharge EV here.

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