Contribute to the development of a recycling-based society by transforming waste into resources for manufacturing
Natural resources are not limitless. We must reduce our impact on the environment by efficiently using and reusing these resources. As a trading company involved in manufacturing, Toyota Tsusho considers it a vital mission to consider the environment and secure and stably provide resources.
To effectively use these limited resources, we will turn waste into resources. We will develop recycling businesses including recovery and processing of recyclable resources from scrap generated from end-of-life vehicles (ELVs), in the market, and at factories/plants, secure resources through urban mining, reuse used vehicles and parts, and recycle plastics, thereby contributing to a recycling-based society.
KPI
- *Converted as raw material for vehicle underbody covers
- Establishment of a recycling scheme for car batteries (currently being developed in seven countries)
- Recycling of aluminum (recycling scrap as raw material, horizontal recycling of aluminum cans)
- Expansion of airbag scrap and cut-off pieces recycling business
- Launch of PATCHWORKS™, a project to promote a circular economy in the textile and fashion domain, and start of global sales of nylon fiber made from recycled fishing nets
Japan is one of the developed countries in producing and consuming large quantities of plastics.
PLANIC Co., Ltd., which is one of Japan's largest manufacturers of recycled plastic, is scheduled to begin full-scale operations in 2022. The company will produce high-quality recycled plastics utilizing used plastics from automobiles and home appliances, which are currently not effectively utilized, as raw materials as well as Japan's first advanced specific gravity sorting technology. In doing this, it will realize car-to-car recycling using automobile-derived mixed plastics as raw materials.
In the same year, Toyotsu PET Recycle Systems Co., Ltd., which conducts horizontal recycling of PET bottles, began full-scale operations. The company will contribute to the circular economy by converting waste PET bottles, which were previously destined for export overseas, into horizontal bottle-to-bottle recycling in Japan.
Now that the automobile industry is said to have entered a once-in-a-century period of profound transformation, we must think about achieving a circular economy for next-generation automobiles. We are taking steps to apply the reverse-supply-chain framework we have been building to the life cycle of next-generation vehicles, as well.
We have built a "3Rs" (rebuild, reuse, recycle) framework for batteries and have been promoting its lateral deployment to reuse batteries in various applications that match their remaining capacity. In addition to onboard batteries, we have also been conducting demonstration tests to reuse Toyota Hybrid System (THS) units, especially their motors, in unmanned industrial machines such as agricultural sprayers and weed cutters.
We began these tests at a vineyard in Hokkaido in November 2020, with the goal of commercialization in several years.
