India aims to upgrade its automotive recycling sector

Based on the recent projection that there will be more than 21 million end-of-life cars in India by 2025, the country’s environment ministry has reportedly started advocating a ‘high focus’ on recycling in the automotive sector. The ministry wants to set up a network first consisting of 20 official automotive recyclers across the country.

To start car recycling in India, the government is proposing a recycling target of 75 per cent to 90 per cent for vehicles, depending on the manufacture of the year. This is a drastic change in India’s car recycling sector, given the fact that the vehicle recycling sector in this country primarily consists of small off-the grid players extracting functioning spare parts. Therefore, the official recycling rate is less than 30 per cent.

The government’s draft proposal includes a 3-year action plan and implementation strategy across seven major sectors; automotive, plastic packaging, building and construction, electrical and electronic equipment, solar photovoltaic, and steel and aluminium.  

India extracts 1580 tonnes worth of raw materials per acre annually. This is ‘significantly higher’ than the world average of 450 tonnes per acre, the environment ministry urges.

Its report underlines that material consumption in India increased from 1.18 billion tonnes in 1970 to seven billion tonnes in 2015. This figure is projected to more than double by 2030.