Sustainable Engineering

Allocation of credits for secondary raw materials in automotive environmental assessments

The automotive industry uses life cycle assessments for meaningful evaluations of recycling processes and secondary components. Important topics are credits for co-products and secondary raw materials. Thanks to closed cycle management and modern recycling technologies, pre- and post-consumer scrap can be recovered to a large extent, which in turn can partially replace primary raw materials. It must therefore be determined to what extent methodologically valid credits can be issued for the recovery of secondary raw materials and the implementation of recycling processes.

Methodologically, this we are working between two extremes: either not granting any recycling credits (principle of first responsibility) or granting credits to the full amount of primary production (principle of last responsibility).

This project developed an adapted approach based on these two approaches for the automotive industry.

In co-operation with: Volkswagen AG

Contact:
Dipl. Wirtsch.-Ing. Sabrina Neugebauer
sabrina.neugebauer(at)tu-berlin.de