Background European Directive 2000/53/CE related to End-of-Life Vehicles (ELVs) requires Member States to achieve a reuse and recovery rate of 95% by average weight for all ELVs by 2015. The countries must implement national legislation and tools to ensure that economic operators involved in ELV collection and treatment meet this target. However, despite significant efforts by European car constructors and other stakeholders, the highest ratio achieved is still only 91%. Non-ferrous metals, plastics, glass, foams and textiles make up around 21-26% of an ELV by weight and are thus an important target area for recycling efforts. Objectives The objective of the LIFE project ICARRE 95 was to demonstrate how to recycle 95% of End-of-Life Vehicles (ELVs) at a regional scale (up to 30 000 ELVs per year) and to create a model that can be applied and exported to other sites and countries in France and Europe. To reach its objective, the project concentrated its efforts on plastics, foams, glass, textiles and catalytic converters. The project aimed to outline an effective process for dismantling recovered car and to develop a cradle-to-cradle process for recycling the targeted components. Results The ICARRE 95 project put in place solutions to increase the recovery (reuse, recycling and energy recovery) of selected materials from End-of-Life Vehicles (ELVs). To increase recovery rates, technically and economically efficient processes had to be developed by the project, which focused on parts and materials that are currently not or poorly recycled. Demonstration of these new routes was done through experimentation with “real size” batches of ELV parts in France. Emphasis was put on the need to create processes that can be easily duplicated at a large scale in other European countries. All the stages of the end-of-life of a vehicle were explored. Firstly, the dismantling of vehicles utilised the knowledge and experience of new practices and tools of project partner INDRA, which has spread best practice in this area through its network of 400 ELV centres. The second stage was the reuse and recycling of ELV parts and materials, involving two partners, SYNOVA for plastics and DUESMANN for catalytic converters. An important action was the management of new ‘short loops’ for reusing or recycling as a whole, creating links between contributors and evaluating the new automotive parts using recycled materials. Around the four project partners, a network of more than 50 contributors was set up, from research laboratories to SMEs, each bringing its own knowledge and experience in a specific field, including waste collection, plastics development, logistics, IT, and material characterisation. The project dismantled ELVs with the objectives of obtaining parts and materials. ELV centres focus on parts as their main revenue source, so dismantling for materials is not a well-developed process. The project developed solutions for better and more cost-effective dismantling, and duplicated these solutions among the dismantlers’ network. Better dismantling means wastes are well sorted and are easier to valorise, which requires appropriate knowledge and tools. INDRA, for example, have increased work station efficiency through ergonomics and the use of practical sheets for specific parts of specific cars, and have developed a tool to facilitate material collection from large parts such as engines and dashboards. A full-scale experiment conducted using INDRA’s new facilities achieved a 85%-95% ratio performance at the dismantling stage, treating 4 000 to 5 000 ELV cars annually. Material recycling involves many specialised companies with very different skills (e.g. dismantlers, waste collectors, transformers). Therefore, establishing new collaborations to create networks and ‘routes’ was an important task for the ICARRE 95 project. Three families of materials were selected at the beginning of the project, due to the mass they represent, the maturity of the technology which is required for recyclability or the economic value: Plastics with a main focus on two polymers: Noryl® and polypropylene used for fenders and bumpers; Foams and textiles used in rear seats and carpets; Metals such as: copper used in electrical harnesses, platinum-group metals used in catalytic converters and magnesium used in steering wheels.The project, initially worked to increase collected volumes of these materials and subsequently found ways to transform them inside or outside the automotive industry. Quality rules for materials dismantling and sorting have been formalised to avoid cross pollution. Two grades of recycled polypropylene developed during the project are now listed as authorised plastics for the making of panels in RENAULT cars. Dismantling is also used to extract parts for repairing old cars, a long-existing market limited by old-fashioned management. The ICARRE 95 project developed a modern alternative through quality control, traceability and direct links between offer and demand (using on-line transaction between dismantlers and users). By the end of the project, more than 30 000 spare parts had been made available. The project managed logistics for economic and environmental improvements (reduced CO2 emissions, energy and water consumption). Shipping covered two flows for reused parts and materials recycling: from dismantlers to collection platforms, and transport between these platforms and recycling centres. The project’s contribution was to prepare parts for ELV centres to ensure quality, develop a network of local partners to facilitate collection, find new ways to collect in urban zones, set up a formalised and shared process (quality management, weight following, packaging), and optimise all flows for cost reduction. An overall recovery rate of ELVs was reached during the project of 88.6%, and the project showed that it is possible to reach the 95% target of Directive 2000/53/CE. Given that 1 115 000 ELVs were treated in 2013, if the project’s performance was applied it would have led to a saving of 19 400 tonnes of raw materials, with 73 144 tonnes less waste sent to landfill. It would also have helped develop a new circular economy aligned with EU objectives. The replicability potential of the project is high and the outcomes can be used by other automotive constructors and in other countries. RENAULT and GAIA are currently extending the collection of ELV materials at the international scale, while SYNOVA is analysing the possibility of building industrial units to produce complex plastics based on the ICARRE 95 scheme in other European countries and neighbouring countries (Turkey). Further information on the project can be found in the project's layman report and After-LIFE Communication Plan (see "Read more" section).