Since over 90% of the total environmental impact of a Volvo product is generated during its useful life, issues such as fuel consumption and emissions are of course prioritised.

In order to focus the efforts and guide the daily work in design and development, many different tools and handbooks have been developed.

Control of Chemicals
Lists of substances that may not be used neither in our products nor in the production (“black and grey list”) and guidelines on how to use them in product development.

Design guidelines
Guidelines with tips and ideas for the daily design work are available, and contain for example data on environmental properties of different materials, the importance of resource efficiency, and how to facilitate recycling of the products.

EPS – a life-cycle assessment tool
Volvo also uses the EPS (Environmental Priority Strategies in product design) tool to perform life-cycle assessments. EPS was developed in Sweden by a number of project partners initiated by Volvo.

Environmental Load Unit (ELU)
The basis principle is that every product can be assigned an ELU (Environmental Load Unit), which is derived from a weighted evaluation of all aspects of the life cycle and is based on the impact of the product on five 'protection objects':