Toyota may ‘set trend’ for car recycling in India

India – Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM), the Indian subsidiary of Japan’s Toyota Motor Corporation, is exploring opportunities to enter the car recycling business. In the land of 1.25 billion souls, a rapidly-growing number of vehicles is expected to come forward for replacement following the introduction of stricter environmental protection regulations.

The envisaged facility would undertake ‘scientific scrapping’ of Toyota vehicles that have reached their end-of-life stage. This would be the first such initiative by a vehicle company in India and is expected to ‘set a trend for others to follow’, Indian media report.

‘In Japan, Toyota designs the vehicles keeping in mind their operational life so that maximum recycling could be undertaken,’ TKM director Shekar Viswanathan has commented. ‘We could replicate the same model in India both in terms of vehicle designing and scrapping.’ Toyota India currently manufactures 310 000 units per year at its two car plants at Bidadi (Bangalore).

Toyota operates a recycling facility in Japan for handling scrap generated at manufacturing plants. Japan has developed a system for car recycling following the introduction of an end-of-life vehicle recycling law that entered force in 2010.