Let’s Talk Sustainability with eBay
In my work as a consultant in the automotive recycling industry I have always carefully considered the sustainability of our industry.
While in no doubt about the need to always take into account commercial viability - it’s important to me to be instrumental in ensuring our industry does what it can to consider the environment and sustainability.
I was interviewed earlier this year alongside Laura Richards from eBay UK for Circular Magazine about their new platform eBay for business.co.uk.
“ I have been working closely for the last two and a half years with eBay UK on this platform and in doing so have formed close relationships with the VRA, insurers, independent vehicle recyclers and collision repairers.”
Consider the embodied carbon savings in automotive manufacturing that could be made by extending the lifetime of vehicles that would otherwise be written off by insurance companies.
Often, the repair costs tip them over the brink and into the scrapyard – but what if this could be reduced to make them economically repairable?
And think of the waste that could be reduced if decent-quality parts from scrapped vehicles were given a second life by insurance repairers to refurbish other vehicles.
Online marketplace giant eBay is looking to deliver just such a circular solution with its new Green Parts for Business e-commerce platform in the UK.
eBay.co.uk already sells one reclaimed part every eight seconds on its portal; with its new platform, eBayforbusiness.co.uk is seeking to create a business-to-business (B2B) marketplace for automotive spare parts for repairs that links vehicle recyclers with insurance repairers.
Every year in the UK, insurance companies write off numerous vehicles as a total economic loss because the cost of repair exceeds the estimated value of the vehicle, or replacement parts are not (economically) available. While a proportion may be wrecks, the vast majority require cosmetic repairs – often with parts that could be readily harvested from other vehicles with no impact on safety, quality or performance.
Over the past couple of years, eBay has been working with the insurance industry, the Vehicle Recyclers’ Association (VRA) and other parties to establish a verified reclaimed-parts strategy for the UK market for collision repairers and mechanical repairers. The Green Parts for A new business-to-business platform for reclaimed car parts is being launched by eBay and promises to bring a circular transformation
Business e-commerce platform aims to create a B2B market for approved buyers and sellers of recycled vehicle parts. This will enable businesses to reduce the cost of repairs to vehicles by using good-quality, harvested parts from other scrapped vehicles – with provenance, traceability and condition validated and verified by recyclers, under the independently certified VRA Certification scheme.
By using these perfectly good parts, and making repairs more economical, more vehicles will be able to stay on the road longer and fewer new parts will need to be specially made – reducing waste and carbon emissions that would otherwise result from the manufacture of replacement vehicles and/or parts.
A presentation of the new platform was given at CIWM’s Festival of Circular Economy in April. It outlined what was described as ‘a game-changing new value chain’ in the automotive repair aftermarket for repairs of ‘potentially immense scale’, based on circular economy principles and meeting the needs for high-quality, verified parts for the insurance and repairer industries.
READ THE ARTICLE IN ITS ENTIRETY HERE
Article first appeared in Circular Online Magazine May/June 2021.