Cars v.s smartphones: why vehicles are easier to recycle 

In 2021, ADEME, the French Agency for Ecological Transition, estimated that French households were holding on to around 46 million unused mobile phones. With 30.6 million households in France according to Insee, that is more than one phone per household. Electrical and electronic equipment that finally leaves the cupboard does not fare much better. In 2023, only 47% of household equipment reached a collection point, against a regulatory target of 65%. For textiles, Refashion and ADEME count 891,000 tons of clothing, household linen and footwear placed on the French market in 2024, against 289,000 tons collected, roughly one ton in three. These rates also stop at collection, what the schemes capture, and say nothing about what is recovered afterwards. Recovery, moreover, combines material recycling with energy recovery, meaning incineration with heat recovery, whereas the reuse and recycling rate leaves energy recovery out.

Cars belong to a different category altogether. Across the European Union, some 8 million passenger cars and light commercial vehicles, five million tons of material in all, reached the end of their life in 2023, from a fleet of roughly 249 million cars and 30 million light commercial vehicles.

Eurostat puts the share of that mass reused or recovered at 93.7%. The share reused or recycled at 88.3%, the latter above the 85% target set in the European directive on end-of-life vehicles. France beats both targets: ADEME's report for 2023 counts more than one million end-of-life vehicles handled, 1.2 million tonnes, with 96.7% reused or recovered and 89% reused or recycled.

Recyclable is not the same as recycled in a closed loop

This performance is partly due to the nature of the object itself. Most of its mass is made of metals, steel and aluminum first of all, which are easy to separate when shredded and can be remelted without any loss of quality.

Turning the steel of a car into a building beam is recycling. Putting it back into a new car, with some of the most demanding specifications in industry, is more complex. Today, only part of the recovered materials returns to the car industry. The challenge of the decade is therefore to close this materials loop, from the end-of-life vehicle to the new car.

It's a four steps cycle :

Step 1: it all starts at the scrapyard

First, the framework is set at European level. Under Directive 2000/53/EC, the last owner of an end-of-life vehicle has been able to hand it over to an authorised treatment facility at no cost since 2007. Manufacturers are covering all or part of the expense. France went a step further with the AGEC law and extended producer responsibility (EPR), which has applied to vehicles since 2024 and obliges car manufacturers to collect the vehicles of their own brands, at their own expense and from wherever the vehicle is kept, as long as it is complete, and then to deliver them to an approved ELV center. There the vehicle is first depolluted, then dismantled. Parts still in good condition go back to garages and after-sales networks as reused parts. The rest is sent for material recycling.

At Renault Group, this is the job of The Future Is NEUTRAL, the entity dedicated to the automotive circular economy, owned jointly with Suez. Two subsidiaries do the work on the ground. Indra has 40 years of experience and processes more than 330,000 end-of-life vehicles a year, through a network of almost 235 approved dismantling centers. Its Goodbye-Car platform takes vehicles of every brand and collects them from private owners free of charge. GAIA, a pioneer of the automotive circular economy since 1998, recycles materials and repairs batteries. The Future Is NEUTRAL presents itself as the only company in Europe to offer competitive solutions dedicated to the automotive circular economy for all stakeholders. It also operates the individual end-of-life vehicle management system of 15 car brands in France, well beyond the brands of Renault Group.

The results of this organisation can be measured in figures. In 2025, The Future Is NEUTRAL, with its subsidiaries and ELV centres, collected and dismantled 400,000 end-of-life vehicles, put 11 million reused parts back into circulation and recycled almost two million tonnes of materials. That is without counting the remanufacturing of 320,000 mechanical components such as engines and gearboxes.

This organisation relies on a historic site, the Refactory in Flins, launched in 2020 and in operation since 2021. The Refactory, Europe’s first factory dedicated to the circular economy of mobility, brings together a range of activities, including the refurbishment of used vehicles as well as several operations carried out by The Future Is NEUTRAL. These notably include GAIA’s battery repair expert centre and THE REMAKERS’ remanufacturing activities for mechanical components such as engines and gearboxes.

Step 2: when the material returns to the new car

The loop is closed when material from yesterday's car ends up in tomorrow's. GAIA has set up closed-loop recycling channels for this purpose, covering copper, polypropylene, flat aluminum and the platinum group metals recovered from exhaust systems. The plants are not left out, since they close their own material flows. At Douai (France) and Palencia (Spain), two Renault Group plants, the aluminum offcuts from the stamping shops are collected, remelted in the foundry and fed back into production. Recycling aluminum takes 95% less energy than producing primary metal, according to the International Aluminum Institute, and cuts emissions by a similar proportion. So, the carbon benefit is considerable.

In 2025, the vehicles produced by Renault Group contained on average almost 30% of materials from the circular economy*. The all-new Renault Clio reaches 33.7%, including 19% recycled plastic and more than 50% recycled aluminium in the wheels of its Esprit Alpine version. The new Renault Master carries a world first, with 20% of material from end-of-life vehicles in its dashboard, a visible part of the cabin. The Dacia Duster introduces Starkle, a polypropylene containing 20% recycled plastic, left raw, with no paint or varnish.

*this includes recycled materials as defined by the ISO 14021 standard, together with production offcuts and scrap fed back into manufacturing processes on the same industrial site.

Combustion and hybrid models exceed 30% of circular materials, while all-electric models are between 24% and 26%. The difference is mainly due to the battery. It is heavy, and it is made of materials for which the recycled supply is still very limited. For electric vehicles, closing the loop is the next frontier.

Step 3: making cars last before recycling

Between the day it is bought and the day it reaches the end of its life, a car covers a lot of ground. Reused parts, checked and tracked, make repairs cheaper. In France, garages must inform their customers of this option. At the end of 2025, Renault Group brought its circular after-sales solutions together under the Renative offer, with remanufactured, reconditioned and reused parts and engine oils containing 70% re-refined base oil. This is a first for a car manufacturer. More than 30,000 used vehicles were also reconditioned in 2025 in the renew Factories of the Group and its partners.

The battery of an electric vehicle illustrates this repair-first logic. Its lifespan is estimated at more than 15 years. GAIA has repaired more than 18,000 batteries since 2012, and 99% of those that go through its expert center in Flins can be repaired. Since December 2025, The Future Is NEUTRAL has also operated the first approved Individual System in France for the end of life of electric vehicle batteries. This channel will become essential. From 18 August 2031, the European battery regulation will require a minimum content of recycled cobalt, lithium and nickel in new batteries.

Step 4: eco-designing vehicles

Going back up the cycle leads to its source, the design phase. From this first stage, material choices are screened through life cycle analysis, from the sourcing of parts and materials to final recycling. The result is lighter, recyclable materials with a higher recycled content. The Emblème demonstrator shows what this means in practice. Designed with at least 50% recycled materials and fitted with a low-emission powertrain, it shows a 90% reduction in CO2e emissions over its entire life cycle.

Recycled materials, a strategic resource

The automotive circular economy is a also a matter of supply, reaching beyond the question of waste. Copper, aluminium and the metals used in batteries all come from finite world reserves. The industry reduces it's exposure to those markets and keeps low-carbon industrial capacity in Europe by recycling a car that reaches the end of its life into a new one.

With The Future Is NEUTRAL set to double in size by 2030, the loop has never been so close to closing.