Milieu brief - environment letter

On the Road to a Better Environment
A car can hardly be described as 'environmentally friendly'. From an environmental perspective, however, different cars differ widely both in the extent and manner of their impact on the environment.

Volvo Cars' Environmental Product Information (EPI) provides you with a holistic overview of the ways in which a Volvo car affects the environment throughout its lifecycle. The EPI enables you to make correct and efficient comparisons between different Volvo cars and model configurations. So use it to move into the fast lane
on the road towards a better environment!

Life Cycle

Every product has an impact on the environment throughout its lifecycle, from extraction of the raw materials to final disposal and recycling. For this reason, it is important to study its environmental impact from a holistic, lifecycle perspective.

A new Volvo car is a highly complex product whose environmental impact varies
at different stages of its lifecycle. In order to cover the entire lifecycle, the EPI
is divided into six main areas.

Many aspects of the product's impact on the environment must be considered when mapping the life cycle of a car. The EPI enables us to grasp the entire life cycle, and to measure our progress as we work to develop more environmentally compatible products and services. In this way, we can:

show how we, our suppliers and our dealers are working to implement environmental management systems; show how much energy is used to manufacture our cars, the quantity of solvents discharged from our plants and the efficiency with which the materials in the cars are utilised; illustrate the emission levels generated by the cars when they are driven and how much fuel they use. This enables you to compare how much carbon dioxide is emitted and the quantity of hydrocarbons released by the car's fuel system as a whole; specify the quantities of recycled non-metallic materials used in our cars; describe which measures we have taken to develop a healthier in-car environment.
Volvo Cars' EPI Helps You to Compare
Since 1998, Volvo Cars has been supplying environmental product information for a number of its cars. We were the first automaker to provide our customers with a description of how we, our suppliers and our dealers are working to implement environmental management systems.

Volvo Cars obviously hopes that its competitors will follow it's initiative by producing open and comprehensive EPIs for their cars. Only then will you be able to compare Volvos with other makes.

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