Invented for life
Making products more sustainable
Bosch has a broad and highly diverse product portfolio. Our products ensure safe and sustainable mobility, are durable companions in the home, or control industrial plant and machinery efficiently and reliably. As varied as our products are in detail, they share a common ethos: “Invented for life.” True to this ethos, our products contribute toward achieving various Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.
Circularity for a more sustainable product portfolio
With our circular economy strategy, we want to enhance the sustainability of our products throughout their entire life cycle — from procurement and production to use, return, and remanufacturing, and right through to recycling and reuse of materials.
To this end, we endeavor to either create loops directly within Bosch or close them outside the company using established recycling processes. This way, we reduce the amount of materials used and our products’ carbon footprint* and contribute toward achieving our scope 3 target.** At the same time, we also avoid potential risks relating to compliance with environmental and social standards. Building a closed-loop system for materials has the particular advantage of eliminating parts of the value chain that are subject to risks.
Three levers of circularity
As with climate neutrality***, in our circular economy strategy we use a model comprising levers that can be applied across the entire value chain.
Materials efficiency
Measures to increase materials efficiency are first priority — after all, it is best for the environment to use less materials. Improvements in materials utilization reduce the carbon footprint and also cut the manufacturing cost of a product. Bosch can also directly influence the corresponding measures.
Second life
In the second lever, we have grouped together those measures that Bosch can use to improve materials flows or to close loops within the company. The concepts and activities range from reusing products and their components to repairs and right through to remanufacturing — in each case with the objective of extending product and component life cycles.
Recycled materials
The third lever of our circular economy strategy — recycled materials — covers all measures to close the loop in the economy for materials such as steel, aluminum, and plastics. This way, we can reduce the use of primary materials, and lessen our environmental impact — as well as human rights risks from the extraction of raw materials.
* To enable comparability between the climate impact of the various greenhouse gases and substances of relevance for the climate, emissions are presented in CO₂ equivalents. In this report, we have taken into account the effects of CO₂ and of other greenhouse gases, as well as climate-relevant substances, to the extent that these are of relevance for the analysis. For ease of reading, we use the terms CO₂ and CO₂ equivalents synonymously.
** Scopes 1, 2, and 3 are used in accordance with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard.
*** With its more than 400 locations worldwide, the Bosch Group has been carbon neutral overall (scopes 1 & 2) since 2020. We achieved carbon neutrality by using four levers: increasing energy efficiency, generating our own energy from renewable sources (new clean power), purchasing electricity from renewable sources (green electricity), and – as a last resort – offsetting residual CO₂ emissions. In 2022, residual emissions of 0.7 million tons of CO₂ were offset through carbon credits.