Support for Japanese car recycling innovation

Japan – The Japanese Ministry of Environment is launching the ‘Auto Recycling Innovation Support Program’ to help foster partnerships and technology advances among the various business interests in the field, including vehicle manufacturers, dismantlers and shredder operators.

There are two parts to the initiative: the ‘Auto Recycling Innovation Partnership Program’ in which multiple companies will join in efforts to develop effective use of used parts taken from end-of-life-vehicles as well as rare earth metals; and the ‘Advanced Metal Recycling Technology Development Program’ in which participants will conduct research on advanced technologies to take finely selected materials from ELVs. For the former, planned aid is expected to be between Yen 10 million and Yen 30 million per single scheme title and the ministry hopes to adopt three programmes. The budget is expected to increase to between Yen 50 million and Yen 80 million for the ‘Advanced Metal Recycling Technology Development Program’, for which two schemes will be adopted.