1.6%
But you may ask, what should we do with this remaining 1.6% that now lands in the waste container? ARN wants to recycle products at the highest quality and responsibly. To do this, it needs help from car manufacturers. When they take reuse as a starting point during the design and production of cars, the circle can be completed. What we can’t do now, will be possible later.
The recycling performance of the chain in the Netherlands is 98.4 per cent, which is very respectable. The vast majority of the materials are recovered – either as raw materials in the production process or in another useful application. It is this final few per cent that requires great effort and high investment, for instance, to safely remove usable materials from the shredder residue.
The final pieces of material
The PST plant in Tiel works hard on this every day. It is constantly innovating so it can separate materials more smartly, accurately and effectively. This involves making refinements, in particular, to the production line. For example adding extra modules, such as pellet production lines and mineral pulverisers, which enable the final fractions to be produced more efficiently.
The mineral pulveriser line manages to reduce the coarse mineral fraction to small grains measuring half a millimetre. This facilitates the recovery of the copper from these fractions. As a bonus, everything remaining after the copper has been removed can be better reused in road construction.
Sustainable Development Goals
For the second year, ARN has submitted itself to the yardstick of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with the motto ‘lean and green’ in mind. The colored SDGs shown opposite apply specifically to the content of this page.
Finding higher quality applications
Copper is currently a valuable material and in great demand. However, what can we do with other materials in the fractions? ARN’s raw material technologists work with knowledge institutes and companies to find ever higher quality applications for the final fraction from the plant. The thinking here is that the final fraction only becomes waste when it is no longer possible to do anything useful with it.
A lot of progress is still being made in this area. However, there are limitations to this route. That is why other routes are being studied at the beginning of the process and during the design and manufacturing of the car.
Questions for the designer
The first thing that the recycling sector can ask the designer is to use components that can be more easily replaced, or removed and repaired. This would enable fragile components to be easily refurbished, which is a great form of retrofitting. Furthermore, this approach would also enable the working useful cars to be considerably extended.
Dialogue is necessary
We will only manage to tackle this final 1.6 per cent if there is dialogue between the recycling sector and the manufacturers. For instance, take the new materials that are used in luxury cars. These include interior components such as natural fibre composites. There are also technical components, such as the leaf spring and air filter housing, which are made from synthetic composites. It is a real feat to manufacture these types of solutions. However, they are currently a huge challenge to process when they reach the end of their useful life.
So, it is fitting here to make a plea for creating the crucial dialogue between designers and manufacturers and recyclers. Together they can make cars that are more recyclable and more circular.