Automotive: GIC project addresses challenges of ELV recycling

The Global Impact Coalition (GIC), a CEO-led collaborative platform originally incubated at the World Economic Forum, has launched what it says is the world’s first Automotive Plastics Circularity pilot together with eight companies in the chemical and recycling industries. These are: BASF, Covestro, LG Chem, LyondellBasell, Mitsubishi Chemical Group, Sabic, SUEZ, and Syensqo.

The pilot will address the critical challenge of recycling plastics from End-of-Life Vehicles (ELVs).

Each year, over 800,000 tonnes of ELV plastics in the EU alone are incinerated or landfilled. This pilot is a key first step to transform this waste into valuable resources, enabling the automotive industry to significantly increase the rate of closedloop recycled plastics.

GIC’s CEO Charlie Tan contends that recycling ELV plastics has long been a challenge, with less than 20% of these materials recycled today.

The real barrier is not recovery technology, but the lack of an aligned value chain linking OEMs, dismantlers, waste managers and chemical producers to make ELV plastics circularity work at scale, which the project aims to address.

Taking a step toward circularity

The pilot, taking place in the Netherlands and Germany, will dismantle, shred and sort plastic fractions, clustered into 10 types of polymers and automotive parts from 100 end-of-life vehicles.

These sorted plastic fractions will then be recycled by the collaborating companies with each of their specific technologies. Focusing on bulk aggregation of ELV plastics, the pilot will serve to test and optimise a new approach to dismantling, sorting and recycling plastic fractions under real-world conditions.

To ensure success, the project partners have engaged dismantlers, shredding companies, and sorting facilities to create an interconnected network.

By pooling demand for a wide variety of ELV polymers, the initiative seeks to demonstrate the economic feasibility of large-scale closed-loop recycling systems.

Project members collectively represent a significant portion of the global plastics industry, making this pilot relevant for Europe and other key regions of the world.

Meeting regional sustainability mandates

The project comes at a crucial time and aligns with evolving regulatory frameworks, including the EU’s proposed ELV regulations, which currently mandate that by 2030, 25% of plastics in new cars must come from recycled materials, with 25% of those derived from closed-loop recycling (from end-oflife vehicles).

Elsewhere, outside of Europe, China processed more than 7.9 million ELVs in 2024 and launched a national action plan in December 2025 targeting increased recycled material use in automotive manufacturing by 2030.

This pilot aims to validate the scalability of solutions capable of achieving these targets, ensuring significant impact and reducing the current reliance on landfilling and incineration.

By optimising processes and achieving purer polymer fractions, the pilot will provide actionable insights into meeting regulatory requirements. Additionally, it will showcase the potential for a scalable, sustainable business model that can be applied globally.

The pilot is expected to yield valuable data to guide broader industry adoption. Following its conclusion, the project will focus on scaling up efforts regionally in Europe and expanding to other key markets for ELV plastics recycling and production.

“Scaling up ELV plastics recycling requires both technological advancements and strong cross-industry collaboration,” said Sunghee Son, Director of Business Development at LG Chem. “By joining this initiative, LG Chem is reinforcing its commitment to developing high-quality recycled materials that meet the performance demands of the automotive sector. This pilot is a critical step toward integrating recycled content into future vehicle production at scale.”

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