Green parts are playing an ever-increasing role in repair as the incident repair automotive aftermarket strives for sustainability.
eBay – sponsor of ARC360’s sustainability themed month of January – has already established itself as a leading player in this space, and here, Laura Richards, Senior Business Development Manager, Vehicle Parts and Accessories, explains how the provision of green parts is becoming a growing focus for the company, and how it plans to develop both range and supply efficiency of reclaimed parts.
Do you have any stats around reclaimed part sales? How is industry adoption performing? What are the current trends?
Green parts have increasingly become more dominant in the industry during the past three years, and a larger part of our overall category sales. The market is taking to the new platform really well – accounts that started off small are growing to be more regular buyers from our green parts platform.
In terms of vehicle owners in general, they are adopting well, too. Our returns rate is incredibly low as there tends to be minimal push-back on the actual quality of the product. What this shows us is that our grading system seems to be doing very well at representing the quality of the parts people are buying.
We expect this success to continue, as we believe that in 2022 businesses will be looking to adapt further and will be focusing on their bottom line and their carbon footprint, so going with recycled parts makes a lot of sense in helping to achieve those goals.
What is the longer-term forecast/strategy around reclaimed parts performance within collision repair?
We really want to be able to increase supply to the industry. At the moment, demand is higher than any singular supplier can manage. A good target would be achieving 20% of parts being replaced with reclaimed.
Of all the parts that we currently have coming into the portal, we’re matching around 13% of what is available with a green part substitute – which is pretty powerful.
How is eBay working with the supply chain to ensure sustainability?
We’re currently focusing on logistics. For example, we want to have a dedicated courier service purely for green parts. So, one warehouse will distribute with minimal vans. Instead of 100 different individual deliveries coming into a garage or bodyshop at one time, we’re aiming to do that in potentially three or less.
Not only is this more sustainable but it also reduces additional administration. It also means deliveries are quicker and easier, with less impact on the automotive professional’s working day, ultimately enabling them to get their customer’s car back on the road sooner.
From eBay as a wider company, we’re doing extensive research at the moment to see how we can help various small and media enterprises (SMEs) reduce their carbon footprint by improving day-to-day operations or processes, such as getting better deals on energy and packaging.
What is eBay doing to reduce its own carbon footprint?
We’ve got a sustainability committee within the business, which I am a part of. The two key verticals which have been targeted are fashion and automotive, and also home and garden from a circular economy perspective. Fashion for second-hand clothing, home and garden for upcycling and recycling furniture and parts and accessories for automotive.
We do also give our own employees various products to help them reduce their own carbon footprint by taking away the need to throw away products such as water bottles, notepads and plastic cups. It’s something we actively encourage our employees to take advantage of.
