Approximately 8 million passenger cars are scrapped every year in Western Europe.
The European Union policy towards the environmental protection is to increase the recovery of these End-of-Life Vehicles (ELVs) over the next twenty years. The European Commission has now approved a draft directive concerning this topic. This draft directive is currently under final discussion at the European Parliament. The objective is to re-use and recover 85 % by the year 2005 and 95 % by the year 2015.
The assessment of the nature and quantity of plastics recoverable from ELVs is important in order to prepare their optimal recovery. A complete original, complex and reliable model has been constructed. As an entry to this model, a large amount of data has been collected from the databases of several car manufacturers, from the dismantling of vehicles by our company and from various other sources.
An accurate estimate concerning ELVs and plastics generated in ELVs was calculated.
From the numerous conclusions of the analysis, the high increase of plastics generated in ELVs rose from approximately 550,000 tons in 1999 to 1,200,000 tons in 2015. The large increase in the use of polypropylene can also be highlighted.