Closing the loop: Turning old car plastics into new possibilities

Can used car parts avoid the landfill or incineration by being transformed into high-performing components for tomorrow's fleet of vehicles? Audi and LYB thought so, which was the driving force behind a collaborative effort to recover plastic parts from old vehicles and chemically convert them into high-quality resins for new car components.

Here's how it works: plastic parts from customer vehicles are recovered from repair shops and dismantled, shredded and processed via a chemical recycling process to create a pyrolysis oil that replaces virgin, fossil-based feedstocks. From there, LYB uses the pyrolysis oil in manufacturing processes to create new, high-quality and long-lasting plastics. The recycled content can be attributed to new Audi products via a mass balance approach.

This first-of-its-kind collaboration supports Audi's innovative, closed-loop plastic project, part of a circular economy strategy to use secondary materials wherever it is technically possible, economically viable and ecologically beneficial.

"At LYB, we are committed to innovative material reuse across the value chain," said Erik Licht, new business development director, Advanced Polymer Solutions in Europe. "By transforming recovered plastic waste materials with chemical recycling, we are helping to close the plastic loop — reducing virgin feedstock use and reducing waste."

Audi has already put this process into practice. In its Q8 e-tron full-electric luxury crossover sport utility vehicle, the company installed plastic seatbelt buckle covers made with LYB chemically recycled plastics.¹ What's more, Audi has publicly stated that the lessons learned from this first project are helping to shape the design of Audi's future vehicle developments.

For both companies, this collaboration shows what's possible when innovation meets sustainability.

Learn more about Audi and LYB's innovative collaboration.

¹ LyondellBasell's polymer product (including fillers and additives) was manufactured from chemical recycling using 70% recycled content by weight. The recycled content was allocated by a mass balance method. This means that recycled and non-recycled feedstocks are mixed in the production process, and an amount of recycled feedstock equivalent to 70% of the Audi product was attributed using a certified mass balance accounting methodology.