New council looks to expand recycled materials in vehicles

The BlueRebirth Council wants to realise a circular economy in automotives.

Six companies – Denso Corporation, Toray Industries, Nomura Research Institue, Honda Motor Co., MATEX and Rever Corporation – aim to build a manufacturing and recycling integrated value chain to realise a ‘car-to-car’ recycling.

‘Car-to-car’ recycling is defined by the BlueRebirth Council as ‘returning all automobile parts to raw materials, utilizing them in new vehicle production, and creating a closed-loop recycling system.’

A typical method is to shred vehicles at end-of-life and sort through the materials. This makes securing high purity, recycled materials difficult, frustrating the recycling process.

‘Automated precision dismantling’ is one of the ways the council hopes to tackle this. It uses artificial intelligence, sensors and robots to mark materials and provide information about their environmental impact, which can be shared between manufacturing and recycling stakeholders.