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ARN has also played a pivotal role in car recycling in the Netherlands in 2018.
The organisation supported its chain partners as an initiator, knowledge centre and facilitator.
In this ARN Sustainability Report you can read how it did this and the results it achieved.
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.
Electric vehicles are accompanied by new technologies. The recycling sector is prepared for this. Dismantling a drive battery is painstaking work. Great care is also required when storing and transporting drive batters and reusing them is a true voyage of discovery. Who would have thought that the lighting of a take-off or landing runway could be powered by one of these batteries?
Thanks in part to the closed car registration system, the lion’s share of end-of-life cars in the Netherlands are recycled by one of ARN’s chain partners in a responsible and high-quality manner. Then you know for sure it has been done properly. The residual materials from all Dutch end-of-life vehicles end up at ARN Recycling’s Post-Shredder Technology plant in Tiel. Virtually nothing is lost.
Before a car goes into the shredder, the engine coolant needs to be removed, and also the oil, fuel, brake fluid, washer fluid and the coolant in the air-conditioning. Not a single drop of fluid can leak out. Processing companies and refineries are always able to provide us with further advice. For instance, recycled base oil is not the same as virgin oil.
The recycling battle only properly commences once dismantling companies have done their work on an end-of-life vehicle. Shredder companies remove everything from the body to recapture the metals. It is a fascinating process. End-of-life vehicles are pulverised into shreds. The coarse, light materials are sucked away. A drum magnet separates everything made from iron and the remainder of the metals are effectively sorted and then melted down. The shredder turns recycling into a win-win situation. Then the post-separation plant finishes off the job.
End-of-life vehicles contain a lot of plastic. And plastic lasts for a long time. Water authorities need a strong and maintenance-free material that can sustain the banks of ditches, ponds and lakes and that is long-lasting. That is why ARN and manufacturer Duvano launched the Circore brand. 1 + 1 became 3. A lot of interest has been shown in the circular soil retention materials. Another new market is waiting too, the market for railway sleepers.
Effectively and efficiently. This is how ARN would like to support the car recycling sector. This lean and mean trend led to substantial cost savings in 2018 and made ARN stronger and more active. The organisation focuses on initiatives that actually provide benefits and innovation. The entire chain profits from these.
ARN achieves an unprecedented recycling percentage of 98.4 per cent because it has the unique ‘Post Shredder Technology’ as the final link in its car recycling chain. Almost 200 different machines work simultaneously in the plant on separating and purifying plastics and other fractions. The installations for recovering metals and for removing wood and rubber from the plastic fractions are particularly impressive. The plant creates cleaner end products that can serve as the raw materials for new products.
The good old internal combustion engine has had its day. A record number of electric cars were sold in 2018, and this number just continues to rise. Cars powered by hydrogen are also increasing in popularity. Over the coming years, the first of these new vehicles will reach the end of their useful life and will need to be recycled. What’s going to happen then? Good preparation is half of the work.
Car recycling is financed in the Netherlands with the recycling contribution on cars. With this money, ARN needs to ensure that at least 95 per cent of the weight of end-of-life cars is recycled. Since efficiency in the recycling chain has improved considerably and cars are lasting for longer than ever, this year the contribution was reduced from € 40 to € 37.50 (including VAT).
Think about a really busy morning rush. Look around you. 2.5 per cent of all those cars will be recycled and largely recovered within a year. There is a good step-by-step plan behind this. Deregister, dismantle, shred and then separate. Thanks to efficient organisation, car recycling in the Netherlands has reached unprecedented levels.
Car glass is in demand. Shards of this glass are mainly processed during the manufacture of beer bottles and glass wool. Recycling provides a 25 per cent energy saving compared to new glass. However, fluids, tyres, metals and plastics are increasingly forming the basis of new raw materials. We are constantly reducing the waste. This is good news.
If it is left to the government-wide Circular Economy programme, it will soon be possible to recycle all materials, resulting in an absence of residual waste by 2050. ARN supports this ambitious target and has signed the Raw Materials Agreement. ARN and its chain partners currently contribute 213 million kilos in recyclable materials. That is 0.44% of all recycled materials. However, there is still a lot to be done.