MATERIAL SALVAGING AND RECYCLING
From our perspective, the final stage in a vehicle lifecycle is not the end, it is a new beginning. It is the starting point in a production cycle of great significance for the protection of the environment. Today, all our cars, starting with the new 500, are built with an ever greater percentage of materials that can be easily recycled and a huge proportion of which ( 95% by weight) can be salvaged. This means we are ready to comply with directive 2005/64/EC that specifies this salvaging proportion for new vehicles registered after December 2008 and all new registrations after 2010. The chart shows the selection of materials for the new Fiat 500, which is already in keeping with the directive. In order to minimise the impact of our vehicles on the environment, at the design stage we are adopting effective solutions such as facilitated removal of fuel, oils and coolant for the implementation of improved safety procedures prior to vehicle dismantling. At the production stage , in addition to making greater use of recycled materials throughout the range, we have minimised the use of substances such as PVC and thermosetting polymers (more difficult to dispose of) in favour of materials that will not pose problems during salvaging and energy generation processes, such as single-material technological solutions, which tend to reduce the number of polymeric families present. The attention of our researchers, engineers and designers is devoted not only to the materials but also to the substances they may contain; this is exemplified by the reduced quantities of heavy metals in our cars and the abatement of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) – choices that are possible, thanks to the new technologies. To increase the abilty to recycle our new models, we have developed specialist information networks in collaboration with other manufacturers: the IMDS (International Material Data System) to monitor the substances contained in the constituent materials of our vehicles, and the IDIS (International Dismantling Information System) that optimises the dismantling procedures by making available to the dismantling companies a manual in electronic form. In order to deal with the complexities of environmental legislation, we have set up two inter-sectorial groups having specific know-how and responsibilities: the Material Laws Compliance and the ELV & Vehicles Recycling groups, which are active both in Italy and abroad. Material Laws Compliance teams are responsible for assessing the impact of the regulations on hazardous substances from the technical-operational standpoints and for monitoring their evolution, while the ELV & Vehicles Recycling teams manage and control the European recycling network, with the support of the Fiat Research Centre (CRF) that works on the development of technologies, geared to the optimisation of component reuse procedures and the generation of energy from waste materials after the sorting process.