Auto Recycling World DEC 2024 / Read original article
The automotive recycling industry faces significant hurdles in creating a circular value chain for plastics, mainly due to the complexity of polymer types and the need for economically viable solutions. The RACE project addresses these issues by establishing a partnership enabling closing the recycling loops of plastic materials from end-of-life vehicles (ELVs). This is done by identifying recyclable plastic components and fostering collaboration across the value chain. This initiative aims to enhance recycling efficiency while ensuring technical and financial sustainability for all stakeholders.
The Challenges
One challenge is to ensure enough volume of similar plastic type meets the requirements of the automotive industry for integrating recycled content into the plastic components for vehicles. RACE will map the different kinds of plastic from ELVs and identify the most significant common fraction, focusing on creating a value chain for this, thereby also aiding the car dismantlers in concentrating on only removing plastic components that genuinely have a chance for a circular life and thereby creating the economical basis for removing and sorting these components.
Another challenge is the large variety of polymer types in ELVs, including all the different additives and fillers added to the plastic. By including a pyrolysis partner in the value chain project, there might also be a recycling route for the plastic components, which cannot be recycled mechanically.
Creating a value chain that is also economically viable is a considerable challenge. There needs to be an economic gain for all partners in the value chain, and the automotive industry (and other sectors) needs to be willing to invest and support it economically. At the same time, the use of recycled content is more complex and complicated than the use of virgin plastic. The driver for this is the ELV directive, combined with the requirements of ESG reporting and sustainable ambitions from the industry. The RACE partnership is open about this issue and will first demonstrate what is technically feasible, focusing on how to make it economically viable.
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