Lifecycle Analyses in Focus

Our environmental management goes beyond the legal requirements, since recyclable and environmentally friendly products are a competitive tool in the automotive industry.

	Greenhouse Effect Comparison In relation to sales, the carbon dioxide emission from a typical Autoliv assembly plant is seven to ten times less than from most manufacturing plants in engineering companies. In fact, the emission levels are comparable to the emission of a service company. The comparison is based on an index that Folksam, a Swedish insurance company, has developed.
	Environmental Certifications At the end of 2004, 80% of Autoliv's facilities had been certified to ISO 14001, an international environmental management standard. These facilities account for more than 95% of consolidated sales. The operations not yet certified are mainly new facilities.
	Environmental Indicators From the levels recorded in 2000, a typical Autoliv plant has reduced its energy and water consumption in relation to sales to 70% and 60%, respectively. Transportation has become more than 20% more efficient than in 2000.

Our environmental management is based on analyses of the entire lifecycle of our products. This is important since the environmental impact from using a product or producing its raw materials could be much greater than the impact from the product's manufacturing and assembling process. For Autoliv's products this is typically the case.

Most of our products are produced from steel and other metals or plastics and other oil-based materials. The products are installed in vehicles where their weight will affect the gasoline consumption and emission during the long life of the vehicle. Our products could also effect the environment when the vehicle is scrapped, if due attention is not paid to the material selection.

As a result, we focus on all phases of a product's life, and not only on the manufacturing phase that, in our case, is the phase that has the least environmental impact. In effect, the environmental effects from most of our plants are so low that they can be compared with the effects from service companies (see graph).

Before Manufacturing

The most important contribution we can make to the environment is to redesign and develop environmentally-friendly safety systems with low weight. Our latest passenger airbag has 40% less weight than the previous product generation. Our latest buckle pretensioner has 70% less weight than the first generation. These two examples alone save 20,000 tons annually (mainly steel) and lead to a corresponding environmental improvement in our supply chain.

Now we drive this trend on by continuously making our products smaller and lighter.

We also work closely with our suppliers in several other respects and require them to implement an international environmental management standard, preferably ISO 14001. We also require them to adhere to our environmental policy (see www.autoliv.com under Social Responsibilities).

Internal Improvements

It is our policy that every Autoliv facility shall be certified according to ISO 14001. At the end of 2004, the certified plants accounted for more than 95% of our revenues (see graph). The few remaining plants are essentially new manufacturing facilities that have not been certified yet.

Our plants monitor relevant environmental factors, such as energy consumption, water consumption and freight (see graph).

Since the environmental impact from our manufacturing process is low, we focus on reducing freight and packaging materials, where we have the highest savings potentials.

After Delivery

We actively support our customers in their environmental programs. We are, for instance, represented in the Ford Supplier Sustainability Forum together with ten other leading Ford suppliers who have a track record of being at the forefront of environmental management.

The most significant contribution we can make to our customers' environmental targets is to continue to reduce the weight in our products, thereby reducing vehicles' energy consumption and emission. This will help meet the vehicle industry's new commitment that carbon dioxide emissions in Europe should be reduced by 30% in new vehicles.

The European directive End of Life of Vehicle (ELV) requires that 85% of the material in all new vehicle models should be recoverable by 2006 and 95% should be recoverable by 2015.

Although the ELV does not specify recovering levels for individual car components (such as airbags) but only states the recovery levels for the whole vehicle, we will make sure that our products will contribute to meeting these standards.

The EU-directive also bans the use of hazardous substances such as lead. Currently, some of our igniters for airbags contain lead (less than one-hundredth of a gram). These igniters will be phased out within the required time limit.