Carbon labelling

Carbon labelling: it’s time for transparency

From recycling waste at home to sharing hand-me-downs, people are recycling and reusing things like never before. Why should car repairs be any different?

Green parts – genuine used, non-safety critical parts like doors, engines, headlamps and tailgates – are less expensive and more environmentally friendly than new parts.

The table on this page shows the carbon savings that our top selling green parts offer compared to their newly manufactured equivalent.

75%

By reusing vehicle parts instead of buying new ones for repairs, we can save an average of 75% CO₂ across our most popular parts sold, compared with a newly manufactured part.

Calculating carbon: our carbon labelling process

We’re proud to say we are the first vehicle salvage, dismantler and recycler to offer carbon labelling. But, as the first ones to do it, we found that there wasn’t much existing research to draw on. That’s why we’ve been prudent when we calculated our CO₂ savings and compared them to newly manufactured parts. But we believe the CO₂ savings speak for themselves.

We studied our dismantling process: from the vehicles arriving at one of our sites, all the way through to how we clean and pack the green parts for distribution to you.

We allocated energy usage to each step of our process, and calculated the CO₂ emissions associated with the energy used¹.
To compare this with a newly-manufactured part, we modelled the energy used in the manufacture of a new part, including the extraction of the raw materials used².

Driving the future for vehicle repair

When a vehicle is written off or reaches the end of its life, a large proportion of its parts will often be in full working condition. Unfortunately, only a small proportion of these parts will be recovered and reused. In the UK it’s thought that only around 3% of parts were reused³.

At SYNETIQ, we recover and reuse around 130,000 parts every year from the damaged vehicles that come through our doors. That’s a lot of carbon savings. Lots of insurers are making the move to green parts, and we encourage you to ask your insurer to do the same.

Frequently asked questions

What is a green part?

Green parts are used Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) non-safety related vehicle parts, such as doors, tailgates and bumpers. They are the undamaged parts of end-of-life vehicles that are reclaimed during the dismantling and recycling process, also known as recycled car parts, reclaimed car parts or genuine used car parts.

How are green parts better for the environment?

Choosing green parts prevents the need for new parts to be manufactured. The extraction of raw materials, the manufacturing process, and transportation from other parts of the world into the UK all has an impact on the carbon emissions from a new part. By using a green part you can avoid these extra emissions and keep existing parts and the materials they are made from in use.

What is a carbon footprint?

A carbon footprint is the amount of carbon released from a product or process. In this case, the carbon footprint of our green parts is the carbon released from processing those parts ready for re-use.

What is a carbon label?

A carbon label is used to indicate a business’ commitment to reducing carbon emissions. In the case of our green parts, we’re using a carbon label to show that recycled parts have a lower carbon footprint than using a brand-new part.

How many of your parts have you calculated a carbon footprint for?

We have calculated the carbon footprint for 27 different green parts across 8 vehicle classes, with 195 parts calculated in total.

How have you calculated the carbon footprint of a vehicle part?

To calculate the carbon footprint of our green parts, we studied our entire dismantling process: from the vehicles arriving at one of our sites, the movement of the vehicles around our sites, the dismantling of the vehicle for each type of part, and finishing with how we clean and pack the dismantled parts for distribution to you, to understand the energy used and therefore the carbon emissions produced at each stage of our process.

Sources:

¹BEIS, 2021. GHG emissions for materials: BEIS Conversion Factors

²Argonne National Laboratory, 2020. Update of Vehicle Material Compositions in the GREET Model.

³Eurostat, 2021. End of life vehicles reuse, recycling and recovery, totals United Kingdom 2018.

Carbon labelling at SYNETIQ