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Approximately 8 million passenger cars are scrapped every year in Western Europe. The European Union policy towards the environmental protection is to increase the recovery of these End-of-Life Vehicles (ELVs) over the next twenty years. The European Commission has now approved a draft directive concerning this topic. This draft directive is currently under final discussion at the European Parliament. The objective is to re-use and recover 85 % by the year 2005 and 95 % by the year 2015. The assessment of the nature and quantity of plastics recoverable from ELVs is important in order to prepare their optimal recovery. A complete original, complex and reliable model has been constructed. As an entry to this model, a large amount of data has been collected from the databases of several car manufacturers, from the dismantling of vehicles by our company and from various other sources. An accurate estimate concerning ELVs and plastics generated in ELVs was calculated.

The objective of this paper is to present a benchmarking tool focused on plastic parts and the material trends in European cars as analysed from this tool and from specific studies carried out by our company. The benchmarking tool has been built on the basis of the following methodology: recent new cars are purchased from dealers, all plastic parts weighing more than 2 grams are fully dismantled and examined, the parts are weighed and their materials are identified, photos of the systems and of the parts are taken, a nomenclature for parts and materials has been constructed and implemented, a specific software has been developed in order that parts can be sorted according to different criteria concerning parts and/or materials.