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Toyota Says “Circular Factory.” We Say Clever Junkyard.
Toyota Motor Europe has announced the first Toyota Circular Factory (TCF), a facility that will process used vehicles at the end of their service life, stripping them to remanufacture parts and recycle the raw materials.
In other words, a junkyard with benefits.
The first TCF will open in Burnaston, England, where, starting in the third quarter of 2025, used vehicles will be broken down and the parts validated. Parts that can be rebuilt and put back into service will go to retailers and distributors, while copper, steel, plastic, and aluminum will be recycled.
Toyota Motors Europe Vice President of Circular Economy, Leon van der Merwe, is eager to get the UK operations started and lead the way in Europe. “We initially anticipate recycling around 10,000 vehicles a year in our UK facility, which will give new life to 120,000 parts, recover 300 tonnes of high-purity plastic, and 8,200 tonnes of steel, among other materials,” said van der Merwe. “As a next step, we plan to roll out similar operations across Europe. And we’re not stopping at our own facilities—we are eager to collaborate with other organisations who share our passion for circularity and commitment to carbon neutrality.”
The Toyota Circular Factory initiative is part of the company’s plan to reduce emissions on its way to a 100 percent CO2 reduction across its European product line-up by 2035. Toyota has also recently taken steps to keep its aging collector vehicles running properly by reintroducing out-of-produciton parts. Toyota didn’t mention how many models it plans to include in its initial European Toyota Circular Factory, but perhaps it can one day include some collector models and help owners and restorers keep Land Cruisers and Supras on the road.
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Many of us here at Hagerty are regulars at our local wrecking yards. Picking our own parts has helped us OEM+ our project cars and save money along the way. However, we know that finding parts often comes down to luck. Many usable, hard-to-find bits have been scrapped because the person looking for them was at the wrong yard at the wrong time. We don’t think wrecking yards are going to go away anytime soon, so we’re glad Toyota is stepping up to get used parts into the supply line.
With recent quality it looks like they are speeding up the cycle.
That Toyota van, I remember those. My parents had one. It was a fun and slow vehicle for our cross country family vacations.
This corporate junkyard idea is interesting.
A step in the right direction at least. We all have to recycle but only about 9% actually finds it’s way back to being reused while the rest ends up in the land fill. When some years ago I was told there was no longer a need to sort I knew the gig was pretty much up. Under 10% is a less than acceptable figure even though some areas do better. Any genuine effort is a a ‘good’ in my book.
Agree. I hope the O.E.M.s will tackle this with more gusto than the current operators do.
This is a brilliant concept. It’s a shame that so much recyclable material just gets wasted in a “crusher style “ recycling yard. Aluminum is (should be) the big winner in this case. It takes ten times the energy to create aluminum from bauxite ore than it takes to recycle aluminum metal. Hope this attitude catches on !
Seems more like a typical dismantling operation than a “junkyard’”
As I already said a small step in the right direction. People tend to look for one moonshot solution when in fact little victories over a wide variety of areas amount to much more in the overall picture. It all adds up. Do you really think drinking bottled water is a necessity? I don’t. Tap water is fine by me. Even if, big if , I’m loosing .006 off my life expectancy I can live with that. Better than overflowing the recycling cans with empties that get blown over by the wind and end up in the creek. I remember the good old days when you’d only see a few gallon antifreeze containers.
Toyota leads the way again. My only surprise is that it took this long for this to happen.
Britain, and probably much of Europe kills cars by salting their roads during winter. Cars there don’t wear out, they rapidly corrode. Owners are punished further by being denied government-required annual safety certificates caused by government road salting.
Part of the problem with recycling is that often there is no viable market for what is being recycled. Our city used to recycle paper and glass bottles, but China stopped buying waste paper and glass bottles were too expensive (and too dangerous to the sorters) to be worth recycling. Now it all goes to land fill, and our waste collection bills go up because there are no buyers to offset the cost.
There’s a LOT of hand labor involved in breaking down a car for proper recycling. First you have to get rid of the engine oil, transmission fluid, brake fluid, anti-freeze, differential fluid, Freon, etc. Then you have to take the car apart, sort out the iron/steel, aluminum, copper wiring, take apart the automatic transmission so you can melt down the aluminum parts and keep the steel parts separately. Sometimes this is done by burning, that results in lots of pollution. Since you aren’t likely to have a smelter in your back yard, all these metals have to be shipped somewhere else for processing. A lot of the plastics are simply not recyclable.
Selling the usable parts off helps a little, but after a few decades (or a few weeks for Yugos) there aren’t enough survivors to sell parts to. Quick, how many 1952 Fiats are still running and looking for parts? And of course, you have to find them or they have to find you.
Some of the You-Pull-It parts yards have a partial solution to this. They let scavengers at the cars for 60 days or so, sell whatever they can, and then what’s left gets crushed. Not everyone gets their parts at the local You-Pull-It partly because the vast majority of people refuse to work on their own cars anyway, or are simply not able to.
A few manufacturers are touting recyclable interior parts (mycellum or something, crushed mushrooms), but that’s only a small part of a large problem. It is, however, a start.
Sounds like there will be a lot more recycling. Has to be a good thing — if they can do it economically. An 80s (maybe early 90s?) Californis study determined that the best way to recycle a car was… as a car. In other words, rebuild it. As long as the body wasn’t badly rusted it would be more cost effective to totally rebuild it using new and refurbished parts rather than using raw materials due to the energy and carbon footprint required to mine and produce the raw materials. Takes a lot of energy and creates carbon emissions again to melt it down and start over, though a bit less than starting over from scratch (raw materials).
I’m a little unclear on how Toyota is planning on securing those used vehicles. Trade-ins at dealerships? Buy them in some sort of Cash for Clunkers program? Pick them out of junkyards? Get them from Midnight Auto Supply? All of the above? None of the above?
[If it’s Midnight Auto, be sure to NOT take John Wick’s Mustang – jus’ sayin’]