Japanese giants unite for car-to-car recycling drive

In recent years, the automotive industry has sought to transition to a circular economy to help realize a sustainable society, taking on the significant challenge of reducing natural resource consumption by greatly expanding the use of recycled materials. However, the mainstream global method remains shredding ELVs followed by material sorting, which makes it extremely difficult to secure high purity recycled materials. Furthermore, collaboration between manufacturing and recycling industries has not been sufficient, and as a result, initiatives to use recycled materials as automotive components— which require both high quality standards and adequate supply volumes for mass production—have not progressed sufficiently. In addition, the automotive recycling industry faces challenges in promoting automation and digitalization and in addressing worker shortages by improving workplace environments.

The newly established BlueRebirth Council aims to address these challenges and, looking ahead to 2035, evolve the automotive recycling industry into a “recycled materials manufacturing industry” that plays a key role as part of a new resource-circulating value chain within the automotive industry. Through these efforts, the companies behind the Council are committed to realizing a true Car-to-Car recycling system.
As specific initiatives, the Council will engage in discussions and research, as well as advance technology development and demonstration projects together with participating companies, research institutions, and other stakeholders, starting with the automated precision dismantling of ELVs to build a manufacturing and recycling integrated value chain. In addition, we will make recommendations to relevant companies and organizations.

Automated precision dismantling is an advanced intelligent system that utilizes AI and sensor technologies to enable robots to operate along the optimal path even for deformed parts. This not only ensures the quality and volume of recycled materials that were difficult to achieve with conventional methods, but also contributes to fundamentally solving worker shortages.

Furthermore, by recording information such as material provenance and environmental impact on a digital platform and sharing it across the manufacturing and recycling value chain, we can ensure a reliable and stable supply of recycled materials.

The Council is committed to expanding the use of recycled materials in automotive recycling and building a manufacturing and recycling integrated value chain toward a Car-to-Car model. Through these efforts, the companies aim to contribute to the realization of a circular economy in the automotive industry.

Note: The headline, insights, and image of this press release may have been refined by the Fibre2Fashion staff; the rest of the content remains unchanged.

ALCHEMPro News Desk (RM)