ZF receives the German Sustainability Award. The prize is presented by the German Sustainability Award Foundation, which selects the winners for individual industries and transformation fields. The expert jury primarily recognized ZF’s far-reaching commitment to a sustainable circular economy. The remanufacturing site in Bielefeld, which specializes in the remanufacturing of powertrain modules for vehicle manufacturers and the global aftermarket, is a key factor in this regard.
Having already received the Sustainability Award in the “automotive industry” category last year, ZF won this year’s award in the “transformation field of resources”. According to the jury, this is one of the key areas in which special efforts, more innovations and rapidly scalable solutions are most urgently needed to achieve the goal of sustainable development. “We are already making an important contribution to conserving resources by constantly increasing the proportion of recycled materials in our products,” says Dr. Michael Karrer, responsible for sustainability, environmental management and occupational safety at ZF. A longer utilization phase through recycling is also an important lever for saving primary materials.
In 25 remanufacturing plants worldwide, the technology group prepares used parts for a “second life” on an industrial scale – at the ZF location in Bielefeld since 1963. These are disassembled into their individual components, cleaned, tested, refurbished and reassembled.
“Combining economy and ecology is our overriding goal. For us, the focus is on planning products sustainably from development to remanufacturing,” emphasizes Jörg Witthöft, Site Manager at ZF in Bielefeld. The entire remanufacturing product portfolio is certified according to the “Cradle to Cradle” standard for a consistent circular economy.
This pays off in the long term: Compared to a new part, the material consumption of remanufactured products is reduced by up to 95 percent on average. The savings in energy and CO2 are up to 90 percent. At the Bielefeld plant, 50 tons of old aggregates are sorted for reconditioning every day. This is roughly equivalent to the weight of the Eiffel Tower per year. This results in around 180,000 clutch pressure plates and disks, 10,000 torque converters and around 55,000 clutch release systems for return to the market.
Every component for which the raw materials do not have to be extracted from the earth counteracts the scarcity of resources. Thanks to ZF’s used parts management, up to 35 percent of the products sold so far are returned to the plant. The Bielefeld location is aiming to increase this rate to 90 percent over the next five years. Waste at the plant, on the other hand, has been significantly reduced – by around 40 percent since 2019. Not only the products themselves are examined for their recyclability, but also the waste materials. The long-term goal is to “establish a site with no waste at all”, explains Witthöft.
The “German Sustainability Award” has been presented in various categories since 2008. Among other things, it honors companies that are particularly successful in meeting ecological and social challenges with their products and services and thus use sustainability as an economic opportunity. An expert jury decides in advance which companies will be honored as pioneers of transformation in the respective industry and in five different fields of transformation.
SOURCE: ZF
