Edwin K. L. Tam

Challenges and Alternatives to Plastics Recycling in the Automotive Sector

Plastics are increasingly a preferred material choice in designing and developing complex, consumer products, such as automobiles, because they are mouldable, lightweight, and are often perceived to be highly recyclable materials. However, actually recycling the heterogeneous plastics used in such durable items is challenging, and presents very different scenarios to how simple products, such as water bottles, are recovered via curbside or container recycling initiatives. While the technology exists to recycle plastics, their feasibility to do so from high level consumer or industrial applications is bounded by technological and economical restraints. Obstacles include the lack of market for recyclates, and the lack of cost efficient recovery infrastructures or processes. Furthermore, there is a knowledge gap between manufacturers, consumers, and end-of-life facility operators. For these reasons, end-of-life plastics are more likely to end up down-cycled, or as shredder residue and then landfilled. This paper reviews these challenges and several alternatives to recycling plastics in order to broaden the mindset surrounding plastics recycling to improve their sustainability. The paper focuses on the automotive sector for examples, but discussion can be applied to a wide range of plastic components from similarly complex products.

Automotive coatings with improved environmental performance

The automotive coating processes contribute significantly to the environmental burden compared to other stages of vehicle manufacturing. Efforts are being made to reduce this impact through legislation, resulting in the introduction of new coating formulations and application technologies. Water‐borne, powder and UV‐cured coatings are seen as alternatives to solvent‐borne coatings. It is not clear which type of coating is superior in terms of impacts on the environment. This paper discusses the stages involved in the automotive paint application phase, together with materials involved. Next, the composition and properties of water‐borne coatings are discussed briefly. A summary of developments in powder coatings and research related to their properties and application follows. Finally, emphasis is placed on life cycle assessment (LCA) studies conducted to identify and quantify the environmental impacts and trade‐offs in the use of alternative coatings.

Bio-Based Polymers and End-of-Life Vehicles

As new materials, such as bio-based plastics and composites, are introduced in vehicles for their improved environmental performance, it is necessary to understand how to efficiently recover these biodegradable materials. This paper provides an overview of the end-of-life phase for automobiles, focusing on the dismantling and shredding processes, and the recovery of materials. Targeted unit operations, such as dismantling of components from vehicles and pretreatment prior to shredding, along with design-for-environment principles, should enable the efficient recovery of materials at the end-of-life phase compared with popularly conceived all-in-one-approaches because of the diverse arrangement of material components.

ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW: A Comprehensive Review of Existing Classification Systems of Brownfield Sites

The state of brownfield remediation and rehabilitation approaches continues to advance significantly, particularly with respect to the types of brownfield technologies available for assessing and treating contaminants. However, largely absent is a structured means for integrating the objectives of multiple stakeholders (e.g., municipality, developer, regulator, community) comprehensively by using a classification method that can differentiate among the brownfields based on an overall suite of relevant characteristics—such as community issues, site characteristics, development potential, and financial viability—and analyze them categorically. Existing brownfield scoring schemes, ranking methods, and identification approaches that were developed in the past by various organizations can be used as classification mechanisms, but many of these systems are designed for a specific group of stakeholders or jurisdictions and cannot be used to evaluate situations outside their intended original use. Nevertheless, they provide useful starting points to consider what the desirable elements are within a comprehensive classification system. This article reviews 12 contemporary brownfield classification systems and analyzes their strengths and weaknesses. It concludes that the lack of a multidisciplinary approach in the development of the existing classification systems limits their use on a broader scale. Lastly, the article establishes the need for a broader multidisciplinary classification system that can serve as a basic framework for systematic decision making regarding brownfields.

Toxic impact assessment of a manufacturing process: illustrative application to the automotive paint process

The paper discusses the application of steady‐state mass balance models for evaluating the fate of a chemical in a multi‐media environment as part of the process of impact assessment and pollution prevention in a manufacturing industry. The model results are integrated into an index that combines steady‐state emissions, substance partitioning and persistence properties, inter‐media transfer rates, exposure pathways and toxicity. The index, called the Index of Potential Toxic Impact (IPTI), can then be used as part of the relative toxic impact assessment of industrial processes. The approach is applied to evaluate the relative toxic impact to human health of solvent selection in the automotive paint process using a four‐stage toxicological impact assessment process.

Regulation of end‐of‐life vehicle (ELV) retirement in the US compared to Canada

To understand the life cycle impacts of end‐of‐life‐vehicles (ELVs) in North America and to reduce these impacts, it is necessary to appraise the regulatory framework that influences the business of managing ELVs. In particular, regulations governing the ‘retiring’ of severely damaged or old vehicles promote safety, protect consumers, and reduce fraud. An unintended, but environmentally beneficial effect from such legal control is to stimulate a greater supply of vehicle parts or materials for direct reuse, remanufacturing or recycling. Yet business, market and regulatory factors vary widely from one region to another in North America. As a result, when and in what condition vehicle parts are returned to reuse and recycle streams vary widely. This paper reviews the regulatory mechanisms and voluntary approaches governing the first stage in managing ELVs – otherwise known as ‘vehicle retirement’ – in Canada and the US.

Sustainability Issues for Vehicles and Fleet Vehicles Using Hybrid and Assistive Technologies

Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) are considered preferred alternatives to internal combustion engine vehicles because they can reduce air emissions and fuel consumption while performing competitively against conventional vehicles in commuter usage scenarios. Hybrid vehicle technologies vary widely and offer different advantages and disadvantages from environmental and socio-economic perspectives for passenger vehicles. At the other extreme, fleet vehicles are operated differently from passenger vehicles and idle for about 70 % of their operation time. Hybrid vehicles have yet to be utilized widely by fleets: they would appear to complement fleet operations but there are other approaches to reduce emissions, including assistive technologies to operate in-vehicle equipment and maintain fleet vehicle capabilities instead of idling. Hybrid vehicles and assistive technologies, such as auxiliary power units could offer significant benefits to fleet vehicles by powering electronics while idling and thus reduce the need for conventional engine operation. However, do hybrids and assistive technologies actually provide justifiable benefits in passenger vehicles and fleet vehicles? There are specific end-of-life issues with hybrids and assistive technologies that should be assessed. These issues and the overall sustainability of vehicles can be assessed using life cycle assessment (LCA) approaches.

Sustainability Issues Affecting the Successful Management and Recycling of End-of-Life Vehicles in Canada and the United States

As the manufacturing and operation of vehicles become increasingly efficient, the environmental impacts of vehicles at the end-of-life phase become more significant. However, the effective recovery of recyclable parts and materials (particularly plastics) from end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) is fraught with challenges. For example, limited market demand for particular part and material types, dismantling difficulties (e.g., rusted part fasteners; welded parts assemblages), and non-uniformity of legislated controls and/or restrictions will influence the successful recovery and recycling of dismantled parts and materials. Automotive material variety and complexity combined with the limited effectiveness of processing technologies for liberating and separating automotive materials (plastics in particular) into sufficiently pure and recyclable material streams tend to limit materials recovery and recycling to principally automotive ferrous and non-ferrous metals. This chapter presents an overview and conceptual analysis of vehicle end-of-life issues to develop strategies and implement actions that can decrease the lifecycle impact of automobiles in their last and perhaps least understood stage.