The automotive industry will find it challenging to meet the target of including 6.25pc recycled content from scrapped vehicles in automotive plastics laid out in the European Commission's End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) directive proposal, Volvo circular economy manager Ragnar Crona said.
On a panel at the Euric Recycling conference in Brussels on 28 September, Crona said Volvo's analysis of its own cars suggests that mechanical recycling could only currently obtain enough plastic to meet about two thirds of the requirements.
But he said that the ELV directive is "very positive" and would help Volvo to address its "biggest challenge" of cutting down emissions from its supply chain, including by using recycled raw materials.
Olivier Francois, the president of Euric — the European recycling association that organised the conference — agreed that the target was challenging, but cited a study showing that 20-22kg of plastic could be recovered from an average car by mechanical recycling. Based on an average 120kg of plastic per car, this would be more than enough to meet the regulation, he said, but the technologies needed have not been scaled up commercially because of a lack of demand for plastic recyclates from automotive waste. The implementation of the ELV directive would create the demand needed to drive investment in the technology, he said.
When the ELV directive was proposed in July, European automotive industry association ACEA expressed concern that the design-for-recycling regulations contained within it could complicate existing rules and industry practices, including those aimed at saving weight and therefore reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions.
"For example, some newer models use carbon fibres to reinforce plastic parts. These novel materials can reduce carbon footprint and energy consumption, but are challenging to recycle and can contaminate waste streams", ACEA said in July.
But a recycler told Argus at the conference that controls on the use of carbon and glass fibre reinforced plastics are essential to ensure a circular economy in the car industry. Recycling carbon or glass fibre reinforced plastics to recover the plastic component is nearly impossible to do economically, they said, and increased usage of the materials would risk reducing the amount of plastic that can be recovered through mechanical recycling below the volume shown in the study that Francois cited.
