Japan's new plan to tackle automotive textile waste

The recycling bottleneck

ELV processing typically achieves 80-90 per cent material recovery—primarily metals, tyres, glass—via shredding, and metal recovery. The remaining 10-20 per cent by weight—commonly referred to as automotive shredder residue (ASR)—poses a significant challenge. This is a complex mix of plastics, rubbers, foams and textiles.

Crucially, 25-30 per cent of ASR also can contain metals like copper and aluminium, but their small size and heterogeneity make processing difficult. Lacking advanced separation, ASR is typically just landfilled or incinerated for energy recovery. Conventional shredding also contaminates materials, yielding low-purity recyclate.  Limited collaboration between carmakers and recyclers, outdated facilities and stringent new regulations are compounding this challenge.

The BlueRebirth Council

To systematically address ASR and establish a closed-loop system, six leading Japanese companies/organisations—Denso, Honda, Toray Industries, Nomura Research Institute, Matec (Japan’s largest ELV recycler) and Rever—have just formed the BlueRebirth Council. Its mission is to build an integrated manufacturing-recycling value chain for genuine car-to-car recycling.

BlueRebirth envisions automotive recycling evolving into a full-fledged “recycled materials manufacturing industry” by 2030. A priority area, leveraging Toray’s expertise, is diverting interior textiles such as seat cloth, carpets, insulation and fibre-reinforced panels from landfill back into automotive-grade feedstock. The Council stresses both the environmental imperative and economic potential—transforming waste enhances resource security and aligns with global sustainability policies. It plans to fund research and demonstrations with approximately 30 member firms, focusing on improving material purity and supply stability to meet the stringent quality requirements of car makers.

Technological pillars

Central to the BlueRebirth roadmap is Automated Precision Dismantling (APD), an AI-guided, sensor-equipped robotic system designed to remove high-value parts before shredding. By extracting components along an optimal path—even from deformed vehicle bodies—APD preserves material integrity and fibre length, enabling true car-to-car recycling for items like interior panels, composites, battery modules and detachable textile sets such as covers, carpets and insulation. While bulk shredding will remain for lower-value fractions, successful APD implementation could significantly reduce mixed shredder stream volume, easing downstream separation and addressing labour and safety constraints.

To underpin APD, BlueRebirth is developing a digital traceability platform logging each recovered part’s provenance, composition and environmental-impact data. Sharing this information across the value chain aims to build automaker confidence in recycled feedstock quality and carbon footprint, help match supply with demand and support forthcoming regulations on recycled content and recycling efficiency.

Drivers, hurdles and impact

Regulatory forces amplify the need for solutions like BlueRebirth. The EU, for example, now requires 95 per cent of all ELVs to be collected and recycled by 2035—an ambition unlikely to be met without addressing textiles and composites. Meanwhile, battery electric vehicles will drive growth in lightweight composites and acoustic nonwovens, enlarging these waste streams. Japan’s dismantling sector also faces a labour shortfall, which APD could help close by making the industry more attractive to new talent.

However, significant challenges remain. Early APD pilots take roughly around 15 minutes per vehicle—only a few dozen per shift versus a shredder’s 150-plus daily. Scaling APD requires OEMs to embed rigorous design-for-disassembly, favouring monomaterials, easily detachable component and adopting digital-passport standards for traceability.

Towards a closed loop

The potential impact is substantial. Plastics account for roughly half a modern car’s volume and over 10 per cent mass. Closing the loop for them—alongside textiles—could markedly curb virgin-resin demand and lower life-cycle CO₂ by 18-23 per cent, according to recent LCAs (life cycle assessments). A dependable stream of certified recyclate would also buffer automakers against resin-price volatility and could foster a major recycled-materials supplier tier by 2035.

BlueRebirth’s initial demo from March 2024 to January 2025 used APD on late-model ELVs to extract high-purity thermoplastics, composites, batteries and textiles for direct reuse. If scaled nationwide, it could redirect Japan’s entire annual ASR stream of around 500,000 tons from landfill into manufacturing, transforming ELV processing into the high-tech feedstock engine by 2035.

ALCHEMPro News Desk (IL)