Materials for a circular economy: building sustainability step by step

V-ZUG is committed to helping build a functioning circular economy and reducing the company’s environmental footprint. In addition to reducing our own emissions, we want to improve the recyclability of our components and materials so that we can save resources. For this purpose, we create life cycle assessments (LCAs) for all product categories. These assessments provide a transparent overview of the environmental burden and how it is distributed across the whole life cycle of an appliance. This enables us to take evidence-based measures for a targeted approach to reducing emissions during the production of appliances. The goal should always be to create economic, environmental and social added value. This is known as the “triple bottom line”. 

The product life cycle assessments form the basis for our “Materials for a circular economy” project, launched in 2024, which has two years of financial backing from our internal CO2 fund. Two material specialists from V-ZUG are also contributing to the work.  This project involves analysing the material composition of our appliances and making targeted reductions. We want to consciously use materials that have a smaller impact on the environment and are easier to recycle. We will primarily be making these adjustments to future product developments, but will also implement them directly in existing appliance ranges where possible.

In 2024, we focused on components made of metal and plastics so that we could find cost-effective and high-quality ways to recycle our largest material flows. The recycling rate for metal is already very high, at around 98%. When it comes to metals, one of the goals of the “Materials for a circular economy” project is to find alternatives that have a lower environmental burden associated with their production. One such example is the green steel from Outokumpu, which has a footprint of 0.5 t CO2e per tonne, compared to the average of 5.4 t CO2e per tonne for conventional stainless steel. We are already using this steel in our current line of dishwashers, and are investigating other applications. 

Looking at plastics, a large number of different types have been used for specific purposes in recent years. This has led to our appliances containing relatively small quantities of many different plastics, making it difficult to recycle the individual streams cost-effectively. In order for V-ZUG to be able to guarantee the quality and functionality of its appliances, the plastics analysed as part of this circular economy project must conform to the same specifications as the plastics currently in use. At the same time, they must be highly recyclable so that, once an appliance has reached the end of its life, its plastic components can be injection-moulded into new components. In partnership with the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) and the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences (OST), we are using simulations to test how recycled plastics change over the average usage life of an appliance. “The results of this research on the use of recycled plastics will one day benefit the entire industry,” explains Marc Vetterli, Sustainability Expert Engineering at V-ZUG.

Reducing the number of different materials used has many advantages. For one, lower purchase prices can be secured when ordering larger volumes of the same material type. It also makes quality assurance much more straightforward. And there’s another benefit, too: “It’s simply easier and more cost-effective to have fewer different material flows to manage,” says Vetterli. The work being carried out in this project is closely linked to our “Circular economy factory” project. At present, the only way to ensure the required purity of the material flows for high-quality recycling is to dismantle appliances manually.  

From its experience with specific application examples, V-ZUG already knows that the choice of materials plays a crucial role in any appliance. One example of this is the new generation of “CombiCooler V2000” refrigerators. Owing to new insulation materials, the environmental impact points in the installed state have risen by 39%. However, the increased energy efficiency reduces the environmental impact points by around 20% over the entire life of the appliance. This shows how worthwhile it is to invest more in the integrated materials – which make up what is known as the “grey energy” proportion -– since this improves the overall life cycle assessment over the appliance’s useful life. As Vetterli says, “Ultimately, all our efforts are aimed at reducing the environmental impact of our household appliances.”