Memorandum by Ford Motor Company
FORD MOTOR
COMPANY IN
BRITAIN
1. FMC group companies in Britain employ
around 30,000 people—approximately one third of all Ford
Motor Company employees in Europe. 15,500 of these people are
employees of Jaguar and Land Rover. Three Ford Motor Company brands
build vehicles in the country—Ford "Blue Oval",
Jaguar and Land Rover.
2. Research and development forms an important
part of FMC's activity in the UK and accounts for 80 per cent
of automotive industry R&D in Britain. FMC employs around
9,500 people at its three main technical centres in the country:
the Ford of Britain technical centre at Dunton, Essex, and the
Gaydon and Whitley complexes responsible for Jaguar and Land Rover
engineering development. R&D is also conducted into diesel
engine engineering at the Ford Dagenham Diesel Centre and among
the technical teams working in FMC manufacturing facilities. Spending
on R&D in the UK for Ford Motor Company brands is around £800
million annually.
SUMMARY OF
KEY MESSAGES
3. Ford is proactive in its use of recycled,
renewable and low life-cycle impact materials and we are looking
at ways of increasing use where appropriate.
4. Ford's approach to the environmental
impacts of its products and processes has evolved from "designing
for disassembly" to "designing for recycling" and
finally to "designing for sustainability".
5. Ford of Europe's Product Sustainability
Index (PSI) is a result of this learning process. The report is
a comprehensive model-by-model approach to addressing the environmental,
social and economic impact of vehicles from the earliest stages
of their development.
6. Designing for waste reduction or recycling
does not necessarily optimise environmental impacts—a life-cycle
approach must be adopted. 85% of a vehicle's life-cycle CO2 is
associated with the in-use phase. A recycling-driven change that
detrimentally affects this phase could have a net negative effect
over the life-cycle.
7. Article 7.2 of the End-of-Life Vehicle
Directive requires new targets of 85 per cent recycling and 95
per cent recovery by 2015. According to ACEA, a more efficient
approach is to send stronger signals to the waste treatment market
by further restricting the availability of landfill.
8. End-of-Life Vehicle recycling targets
can limit the auto industry's ability to meet legislation in other
areas, importantly CO2 emissions and the regulated tailpipe emissions,
and may discriminate against weight reduction measures.
BACKGROUND
9. Ford has applied Design for Environment
principles since the early 90s. Then, the focus was on improving
disassembly of vehicles by taking into account accessibility of
parts to be disassembled, the type and number of different fasteners
used and the marking of parts for easy identification. At that
time disassembly was seen as the preferred End-of-Life strategy.
10. In the mid-90s the possibilities of
mechanical recycling were increasingly taken into account in the
strategy, leading to design guidelines that covered aspects such
as material complexity and material compatibility. In the late
90s there was a shift in design philosophy from end-of-life to
a total life-cycle focus. The material and component production
phase as well as the in-use phase appeared on the Design for Environment
agenda.
11. The reason for this shift was that several
studies had shown that recycling only contributes a small amount
to the total life-cycle impact, that the in-use phase is clearly
dominant and that a focus solely on the end-of-life phase could
have a net negative effect over the whole life-cycle. Since 2002
social and economic aspects in addition to the environmental aspects
have been included in the design optimisation. Ford refers to
the new approach as Design for Sustainability.
12. Ford is proactive in its use of recycled,
renewable and low life-cycle impact materials and we are looking
at ways of increasing use where appropriate. European Ford vehicles
contain between 8-15 kg recycled non-metals each depending on
the model type.
13. Example parts include:
— Housings for air-conditioning systems
made of recycled polypropylene bottle caps.
— Engine covers made of recycled polyamide.
— Wheelhouse linings made of recycled
polypropylene.
— Sound damping/insulation materials
made of recycled textile waste/scrap and recycled bitumen.
— Fan wheels and frames made of recycled
carpets and packaging tapes.
— Air filter housings made of recycled
car battery casings.
— Door mirrors made of various types
of recycled housings.
— Radiator grilles made of recycled
bumper material.
14. Ford Motor Company was the UK's first
vehicle manufacturer to offer free take back of all qualifying
end-of-life vehicles. A network comprising approximately 130 treatment
facilities and 20 collection points has been established UK-wide.
Ford's end-of-life vehicle network now extends across all EU Member
States and beyond.
15. Information about the UK disposal network
is made available to the last customer via the Ford website, (www.ford.co.uk),
our contracted network partner Cartakeback.com Ltd (www.cartakeback.com),
a hotline number, or e-mail.
BETTER DESIGN
AND THE
USE OF
MATERIALS
What role can better design and materials play
in minimising the creation of waste? Are there any barriers to
how knowledge in this area can best be translated and applied?
16. Ford's approach to assessing the impacts
of waste from its products and processes has evolved from "designing
for disassembly" to "designing for recycling" and
finally to "designing for sustainability". The life-cycle
approach is far more important than focusing only on one particular
aspect of the life-cycle.
17. In the case of vehicles, design changes
to improve disassembly and recycling have no significant environmental
benefit due to the relatively small contribution of the end-of-life
phase to the overall life-cycle impact. The figure below illustrates
that 85 per cent of a vehicle's environmental impact is generated
in the in-use phase.
18. Taking a more holistic life-cycle approach
to design and materials selection can optimise the environmental
impact. The Ford Product Sustainability Index (example attached)
report is a comprehensive model-by-model approach to addressing
the environmental, social and economic impact of vehicles from
the earliest stages of their development. The figure below illustrates
the components of the whole life-cycle approach to sustainable
design.
19. Automotive manufacturers use significant
proportions of steel and other alloys, plastics and some precious
metals in their products. The cost of these materials is sufficient
incentive to minimise waste in the production process itself.
Cars are one of society's most recycled products due to the high
value of the vehicle at the end of its life. This is evident by
the widespread absence of abandoned vehicles throughout the UK.
What factors influence the use of materials? In
what way do considerations of sustainability feature in the selection
of most commonly used materials?
20. Cost, technical and environmental performance,
manufacturability, durability, substance restrictions (voluntary
and regulated) and weight are some common examples of factors
influencing such decisions, although others will come into play
depending on the particular application.
21. Ford Motor Company has established within
its global Ford Product Development System (FPDS), a vehicle product
system which strives to minimise the total environmental impact
of vehicles. This approach is illustrated with the intake manifold
example below where a recycled product generates the lowest lifetime
CO2 emissions. It should be noted that the improvement in lifetime
CO2 from utilising recycled content is not as significant as that
from discontinuing the use of aluminium. This, in turn, makes
recycling targets more difficult to achieve.
22. Understanding the overall life-cycle
benefits when selecting materials is key. Focusing only on recycling
can be detrimental. For example, reducing material complexity
to improve recyclability may lead to over-engineering of materials
resulting in increased weight, leading to greater fuel consumption
in the in-use phase and increasing the overall environmental impact.
Conversely, engineering lighter vehicles with composite panels
or aluminium body structures can reduce environmental impacts
in the in-use phase but may make mass-based recycling targets
more difficult to achieve. The figure provided by the SMMT below
illustrates the proportion of metals in an average UK end-of-life
vehicle.
To what extent do product designers and engineers
take into account the availability and the end-of-life impacts
of raw materials?
23. Automotive industry past practice was
to enable reuse and recycling through ease of dismantling of targeted
parts as well as through material selection (eg to improve material
compatibility). Recent scientific studies have shown that while
such an approach imposes severe design constraints (eg on craftsmanship,
weight, packaging), it delivers few, if any, of the perceived
benefits.
24. There is a fundamental difference between
vehicle assembly where workers are trained to assemble few parts
for one or two vehicles and vehicle disassembly where workers
have to cope with hundreds of different vehicle types, of all
ages and some damaged or with damaged fasteners.
25. Real-world dismantling tests have shown
that only a small portion of the dismantling time can be addressed
by product design. Most theoretical linkages between design aspects
as length of screws, accessibility, visibility, etc. are overruled
in practice by issues such as operator experience and work organisation.
This means Design for Disassembly is not really an effective approach.
From an environmental perspective dismantling is clearly not preferable
compared to Post-Shredder Treatment separation.
26. From a purely environmental perspective—when
taking the whole vehicle life-cycle into account—the end-of-life
phase of certain types of non-metals does not play any significant
role in terms of potential environmental impacts or recycling
credits. These efforts result in no remarkable improvement for
the environment.
27. Advanced recycling methods (Post-Shredder
Treatment) exist that allow the recycling and recovery of literally
all materials for vehicles in the end-of-life stage. Thus a focus
on life-cycle impact is more relevant on material selection than
a focus specifically on end-of-life. The general waste hierarchy
(recycling is better than energy recovery is better than landfilling)
has also been shown not to apply in the case of automotive non-metals.
What impact does the development of new materials
have on design? How much interaction is there between material
scientists and designers?
28. Any impacts will be application-specific,
affecting any number of parameters (for example weight, strength,
stiffness, manufacturability, and cost).
Can better designed products offset the increase
in consumption?
29. Recycling-driven changes to product
design can sometimes jeopardise the overall environmental performance
(see above). In consequence, design needs to be more holistic.
The Ford approach has evolved from "designing for disassembly"
to "designing for recycling" and finally to "designing
for sustainability". Ford of Europe's Product Sustainability
Index (PSI) is a result of this learning process.
30. Vehicles are highly recyclable (the
European average is approximately 85 per cent). Only 5 per cent
of the life-cycle energy is used at the end-of-life stage and
10 per cent during its manufacture. It is therefore most important
to address the remaining 85 per cent of life-cycle energy consumption
from the in-use phase. Reduction in consumption is therefore best
tackled by a series of low CO2 vehicle technologies such as efficiency
improvement, weight reduction, reduced parasitic energy loss and
new low-carbon fuels.
BUSINESS FRAMEWORK
Does the current policy, regulatory and legal
framework support and incentivise the development of better, more
sustainable products and processes? How is the framework communicated
to businesses and what is the level of awareness and understanding
among businesses?
31. Processing of end-of-life vehicles is
already heavily regulated. Article 7.2 of the End-of-life Vehicle
Directive requires new targets of 85 per cent recycling and 95
per cent recovery by 2015, up from the current 80 per cent and
85 per cent respectively. The environmental aspects of the Directive
already control potential pollution risks and the use of heavy
metals, and the global economic demand for metals of all types
ensures their efficient recycling. The remainder (mainly plastics)
can be efficiently recycled based on Post-Shredder Treatment (PST)
techniques. Thus we would propose in the case of end-of-life vehicles
that greater emphasis be placed on PST rather than recycling or
recovery targets.
32. According to the European Automotive
Manufacturer's Association, ACEA, the most effective policy instrument
to achieve the goal of waste reduction (and the promotion of PST)
is a restriction of landfilling of automotive shredder residue.
Investments in advanced recycling processes are not being made
because the landfilling alternative is both available and affordable.
Regulation can help further by establishing markets for the automotive
residues which are currently landfilled. Setting increasingly
stringent end-of-life vehicle recycling targets for automotive
manufacturers to meet will not create such a market.
How central is sustainable design to business
thinking? What initiatives are in place to encourage this and
are they meeting business needs?
33. The Ford Product Sustainability Index
(example attached) report is a comprehensive model-by-model approach
to addressing the environmental, social and economic impact of
vehicles from the earliest stages of their development. It includes
a foreword from John Fleming, President and CEO of Ford of Europe
stressing the importance of sustainable design for business thinking.
What other measures can promote a focus on waste
reduction among businesses?
34. An exclusive focus on waste reduction
can sometimes be detrimental to the environment.
What lessons can business learn from international
experience?
35. An exclusive focus on waste reduction
can sometimes be detrimental to the environment.
GOVERNMENT POLICY
What is and should be the role of Government in
addressing the issue of waste reduction?
36. The role of Government is to ensure
that the market mechanisms can work. Increased raw material prices
and the limiting options of cheap landfilling are already creating
a natural business incentive for a change. Creating markets for
waste streams not already recycled will clearly reduce waste further,
as will incentives for automotive shredders to invest in the latest
Post-Shredder Technologies.
37. End-of-Life Vehicle recycling targets,
alongside safety and air quality regulations, limit the auto industry's
ability to meet its principal environmental focus of reducing
CO2 emissions. Recycling targets penalise manufacturers that include
a light-weighting approach in their low-CO2 strategies.
How does Government policy link up with European
strategies and action plans?
38. The end-of-life vehicle experience has
been uniform across the EU and other countries. As a global business
the automotive industry needs a common and consistent approach.
Piecemeal national solutions will elicit a sub-optimal response.
What lessons can be learnt from other countries—within
the EU and globally?
39. The end-of-life vehicle experience has
been uniform across the EU and other countries.
CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR
How can better product design be used to effect
a change in consumption patterns and behaviour?
40. Fuel economy indicators and gear shift
indicators can support the right change in driving behaviour and
use of vehicles. Consumers demand increased durability and longevity—slowing
the rate of penetration of more efficient products into the market.
What role do marketing strategies play in influencing
more sustainable design?
41. The in-use phase of the product life-cycle
has the greatest impact in environmental terms. Fuel consumption,
as a proxy for CO2 emissions, is already an important factor in
the consumers purchase consideration. As well as meeting our legal
obligations to disclose the CO2 emissions of our products, we
further advise our consumers on a voluntary basis through printed
media and at our dealerships. Further research into consumer attitudes
to the environment would be welcomed.
Are there any gaps in knowledge in this area?
42. Consumers are the key to success. Their
demand triggers production and consumption. Therefore research
activities around the establishment and maintenance of sustainable
consumer behaviour would be welcomed.
SKILLS
To what extent are considerations of sustainable
waste reduction part of broader industrial training courses?
43. These considerations are already integral
to the Ford product design philosophy.
March 2008
| 
