— By Plasteurope.com staff — 

The Global Impact Coalition (Geneva, Switzerland; www.globalimpactcoalition.com) has announced plans to mine data from 100 end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) for the purpose of a feasibility study for automotive recycling.

As of March 2025, Dutch car recycler KlaasBoer (Uithuizen; www.klaasboer.nl) along with Germany’s Steinert (Cologne; www.steinertglobal.com) and Reyond (Kassel; www.reyond.de) plan to dismantle the vehicles and group by parts, then shred the parts and sort the fractions by 10 different polymer types.

The pilot is set to run for seven to nine months and focus on body panels, bumpers, lighting, engine parts, the cooling system, as well as interior components such as steering wheels, seating, instrument panels, and flooring.

In response to a Plasteurope.com query, the coalition said the plastic fractions include polypropylene, polyamide, polyurethane, polycarbonate, PMMA, HDPE, and TPE. The plan is to send the fractions to seven chemical and recycling companies, which are responsible for the actual reclamation.

The companies include BASF, Covestro, LyondellBasell, Mitsubishi Chemical, Sabic, Suez, and Syensqo – all part of the Global Impact Coalition.

A spokesperson said recovery would mainly be achieved through chemical recycling processes, with mechanical reclaim taking a lesser focus.

Related: French government permitted to subsidise recycling efforts

In the EU, an average of around 5 mn cars are taken off the roads each year. For 2022, Eurostat puts the number at some 4.7 mn ELVs – the figures for 2023 aren’t expected until November. The total weight is estimated at nearly 5.5 mn t, with the share of plastics and elastomers making up roughly a quarter.

Just recently, the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) published a report that calls for the recyclate content in new vehicles to be lowered considerably.

Related: Umbrella group tells EU lawmakers to “stick with End-of-Life Vehicles Regulation plan”

The Global Impact Coalition was relaunched in 2023 after having been active as the Low-Carbon Emitting Technologies Initiative (LCET) from 2019 under the auspices of Switzerland’s World Economic Forum.

The CEO-led coalition said it is aiming to make the chemical industry climate-neutral by 2050. This aligns with the overall target of the European Union, which also has the intermediate goal of reducing emissions by 55% by 2030 against 1990 – emissions were 37% below that benchmark in 2023.

Another project kicked off by members of the coalition is for electrically heated steam crackers, for which BASF, Sabic, and Linde inaugurated a demo plant in April last year.