Currently, 85% of the plastics from an end-of-life car are incinerated. Only 15% of the plastics return as raw material. Information extracted by RIVM shows that there is potential to quadruple material retention by 2030. With technological development, 65% of plastics can be recycled into new raw materials in the future. Especially with chemical recycling, circularity can increase significantly.
Source: RAI Vereniging
To realize this technological development, however, new legal and economic incentives are necessary. Such as minimum recycling percentages of discarded plastics from cars and a legal minimum amount of recyclate in new cars. Consideration must also be given to financing innovations and how to make it economically rewarding to use more recycled plastics.
Including CO2 reduction
Chemical recycling is not yet used in practice for waste streams derived from end-of-life cars. However, this technique offers a good opportunity to recycle up to 65% of plastics into new raw material by 2030, thereby reducing incineration. This study shows that the material conservation of plastics in 2030 can also provide a climate gain of about 25 kilotons CO2-eq./year.
Difference between types of chemical recycling
Recycling 100% does not appear to be feasible in 2030 because some of the plastic waste from the automotive sector (especially fibers) can then still only be processed in cement kilns. Moreover, there is material loss in both mechanical and chemical recycling. In pyrolysis (type of chemical recycling), the loss of material is about 50%, which is higher than in two other types of chemical recycling (dissolving/necrolysis, depolymerization). Chemical technologies also offer opportunities to reduce high concentrations of hazardous substances in recyclate.
Technical possibilities
The aim of the report is to provide policy makers and industry with guidance for the transition to a safe and circular economy. RIVM inventoried the available techniques until 2030 for recycling plastic waste streams from the ('automotive') sector. This looked not only at the effects for circularity of materials, but also at reducing CO2 emissions and lowering concentrations of hazardous substances in the recyclate. Through mechanical recycling, a limited portion of plastics (15%) is now processed into new materials. The rest is incinerated in a waste-to-energy plant (AEC), in blast furnaces or in cement kilns.
