Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has announced that it has joined the Global Impact Coalition (GIC), a CEO-led platform promoting a circular and net-zero chemicals future for the chemical industry and its value chain. JLR has joined as a project member and will engage with the second phase of GIC’s Automotive Plastics Circularity Project. The initiative aims to strengthen collaboration to identify solutions for plastics recycling from end-of-life vehicles (ELVs). Interplas Insights has previously sat down with the Global Impact Coalition to find out more about the Automotive Plastics Circularity Project.
Global Impact Coalition
Jaguar Land Rover joins the Global Impact Coalition
Phase I was a success, with the project demonstrating the technical feasibility of recovering plastics from ELVs utilising component and polymer insights. Now, phase II will look at industry-scale implementation. Automotive manufacturers are joining chemical companies to evaluate and address the economic feasibility of the value chain, with JLR being one of three Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) getting involved. Their involvement will provide expertise in vehicle design and circularity innovation. JLR will help outline priorities for the next phase, contributing to the development of a business case and industry roadmap for ELV plastics recycling. The company will also support the identification of priority vehicle components and define demand-side specifications for recycled automotive plastics.
Phase II will focus on the design for recycling. The previous phase found that many automotive components are too complex to recycle cost-effectively. To resolve this issue, OEM participants are going to co-develop design principles, ensuring future vehicles are built with end-of-life recovery in mind.
“Welcoming JLR to the project is an important step forward. If automotive plastics recycling is going to scale, OEMs need to be part of the solution,” said Charlie Tan, CEO of GIC. “Today, the challenge is not technology. It is that the plastics value chain was never designed to recover materials at the end of life. As a result, recovery remains complex, inconsistent and often uneconomic. Our Phase I pilot and report showed that meaningful recovery is possible. The next phase is about addressing the structural barriers and moving towards implementation at an industry scale. This requires coordination across the value chain to make automotive plastics circularity commercially viable.”
Paul Francis, Senior Manager, Circular Supply Chain of JLR, added, “JLR is excited to be part of this project. The value comes from working across the entire supply chain and combining our expertise. Part of our role is to clarify our material requirements whilst evolving our designs to better enable a circular supply chain. Our ability to do this is significantly enhanced through genuine partnership and collaboration.”