The Potential and Trend of End-Of-Life Passenger Vehicles Recycling in China
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sustainability Article The Potential and Trend of End-Of-Life Passenger Vehicles Recycling in China Yang Li 1, Kiyoshi Fujikawa 2, Junbo Wang 3, Xin Li 3, Yiyi Ju 4,* and Chenyi Chen 1 1 School of Business Administration, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan 430073, China; [email protected] (Y.L.); [email protected] (C.C.) 2 Applied Social System Institute of Asia, Nagoya University, Nagoya 4648601, Japan; [email protected] 3 College of Management Science, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu 610051, China; [email protected] (J.W.); [email protected] (X.L.) 4 Institute for Future Initiatives, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 1130003, Japan * Correspondence: juyiyi@ifi.u-tokyo.ac.jp Received: 17 January 2020; Accepted: 12 February 2020; Published: 15 February 2020 Abstract: The contradiction between limited resources and rapid development in the automobile industry has been driving society to seek the supply of recyclable resources from End-of-Life Vehicles (ELVs). It has become an urgent need for vehicle recycling policymakers to have an overall understanding of the end-of-life (EoL) vehicle population, as well as for vehicle producers to note what and how they can benefit from ELV recycling. This paper estimated the potential population of EoL passenger vehicles, all recyclable resources from them, as well as the economic values of these recyclable resources. The results show that in 2030, with a lighter-weight trend of passenger vehicles, more than 26.3 million passenger vehicles will be retired with 19.1 million tons of recyclable steel and 6.2 million tons of plastics. The theoretical economic value of all recyclable resources will reach 101.3 billion yuan ($14.4 billion) in 2030, which is an average of approximately 2.4 thousand yuan ($341.8) for each EoL passenger vehicle. It is time for the vehicle producers to shift to a manufacturing mode considering such large potential of ELV recycling. The scenario analysis suggests that in the context of a light-weighting trend, ELV resource recovery in the future calls for improvement in the recycling and reuse technologies of plastics and rubbers. Keywords: End-of-Life passenger vehicles; recyclable resources; urban mining; scenario analysis 1. Introduction The past decades witnessed the increasingly acute contradiction between limited in-ground ore deposits and the demand for resources along with rapid urbanization [1]. Such contradiction has been driving society to search for other supply sources of secondary materials, compounds, or elements from anthropogenic stocks, namely, through urban mining [2]. These anthropogenic stocks include buildings, infrastructure, products, and other forms, among which end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) are one typical example of products containing plenty of resources available to be recycled [3]. Since the market of automobiles in China became the largest in the world in 2009, its scale of both production and sales has remained the top for ten continuous years. According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers [4] (2019), in 2018, the production and sales of vehicles in China were 27.81 million and 28.08 million vehicles, respectively, among which the production and sales of passenger cars are 23.53 million and 23.71 million, occupying a large share (over 80%) of the industry, with the rest of commercial vehicles such as buses and trucks (less than 20%). However, the rapid development of passenger vehicle ownership also leads to the concern of a boom in end-of-life Sustainability 2020, 12, 1455; doi:10.3390/su12041455 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Sustainability 2020, 12, 1455 2 of 13 (EoL) passenger vehicles. Li et al. [5] (2019) investigated that the problem of recycling ELVs will become increasingly serious; a large number of scrapped vehicles flow into informal channels and black markets for resale, which results in significant environmental problems and safety hazards. Calling for the solution to the poor capacity and efficiency of recycling ELVs in China, as a premise, requires a basic understanding of the potential scale of them, as well as the potential benefits. Given the unclear potential of the recyclable EoL passenger vehicle population and a relatively high average recycling cost, it has become an urgent need for both vehicle recycling policymakers to have an overall understanding of the EoL passenger vehicle population, and for vehicle producers to note whether/how they can benefit from EoL vehicle recycling. The awareness of both recycling policymakers and vehicle producers may generate more incentives to promote resource recovery within the automobile industry, and further for a more sustainable development pathway of the whole industrial network. Regarding the literature on the estimation of ELV generation, Button et al. [6] (1993) and Kobo et al. [7] (2003) estimated such generation of ELVs by dynamic models of the in-use stocks and the lifetime spans of vehicles. Azmi and Tokai [8] (2017) demonstrated the necessity of estimating the population of ELVs in response to the changes in the vehicle ownership level. Pan and Li [9] (2016) revealed the benefits based on the technology adopted by leading enterprises, which is used in calculating the gross income and reduction of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Hedayati and Subic [10] (2011) proposed a decision-making support framework for the recovery of ELVs to provide an integrated sustainable treatment option. Frits M. Andersen et al. [11] (2007) described a model for the projection of the number of ELVs and presented a baseline projection, which adopted Weibull distribution functions to estimate the lifetime of vintages of vehicles. Hu et al. [12] (2013) further modeled the projected population of ELVs in China in 2015, 2017, and 2020, with the consideration of provincial diversities in China. Regarding the literature on the local development of passenger vehicles in China, Qiao et al. [13] (2019) focused on the economic and environmental benefits of electric vehicle recycling in China, based on the technology adopted by leading enterprises, the gross income and reduction of energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions are calculated to reveal the benefits. Flavius Ioan Rovinaru et al. [14] (2019) investigated the ecological and environmental impacts of ELV dismantling/recycling activities in Romania. Besides, Idiano D’Adamo et al. [15] (2020) presented some policy implications in terms of both the economic importance of the Likert scale and the relevance of synergy between the Circular Economy (CE) and technology. Regarding the literature on recyclable resources from ELVs, Jody et al. [16] (2006) divided the recoveries from ELVs into two categories including: i) rare metal and nonmetal elements with independently high economic values; ii) materials such as metal, plastics, and glasses, that may be blended again with virgin materials in the manufacturing process of vehicles. Xu et al. [17] (2016) targeted 17 rare earth elements from ELVs, which are typical examples of the mentioned first category, as well as designed four scenarios in Japan to explore the potential recovery. Their results show that NiMH batteries and motors containing NdFeB magnets can be identified as target components and 2700 ( 500) tons of rare earth elements can be recovered in 2030. This paper mainly focuses on ± the second category to provide an overall view of more resource forms. However, the estimation of recyclable resources from ELVs considering long-term economic factors has not been thoroughly discussed. Instead of discussing the policies directly influencing the resource recycling from ELVs, such as subsidies on legal ELV recycling, adjusting qualification standard of automobile dismantling, and the like, this paper focused on the trend of passenger vehicle retirement in response to the long-term economic factors (income growth and market demand saturation), which lays the foundation for further analysis of short-term policy changes. Li and Fujikawa [18] conducted an empirical analysis to estimate the potential of recyclable resources from EoL passenger vehicles. The estimated EoL passenger vehicles will reach 21.8 million, leading to the potential of 74.1 million tons of recyclable resources by 2020. This paper is an upgraded work of this previous work, with a focus on passenger vehicles (conventional fuel passenger vehicles and new energy passenger vehicles), the extended Sustainability 2020, 12, 1455 3 of 13 data to 2030, and additional estimation of the economic values of recyclable resources from EoL Sustainability 2020, ?, x FOR PEER REVIEW 3 of 13 passenger vehicles. InIn this this paper, paper, Weibull Weibull distribution distribution functions functions are are adop adoptedted as as the the tool tool to to reveal reveal the the distribution distribution patternpattern ofof lifetimelifetime spans spans for for durable durable goods, goods, namely namely the passenger the passenger vehicles. vehicles. 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