Posted on 07 September 2016 by CarTakeBack

Car makers Jaguar Land Rover are working on a project with an aluminium producer to close the loop on car manufacturing. The project "REALCAR" sees them reclaiming scrap aluminium, melting it down into recycled aluminium sheet to be used to produce new cars. Last year they reclaimed over 50,000 tonnes of scrap aluminium, the equivalent to nearly 200,000 Jaguar XE shells.

As well as reducing waste by recycling metal, as aluminium can be almost endlessly recycled, the project has so far prevented more than 500,000 tonnes of CO₂ from entering the atmosphere.

This project also saw the development of a recycled aluminium-based alloy which can take a higher percentage of the recovered scrap metal. In 2014, the Jaguar XE became the first car in the world to use this high-strength, lightweight aluminium alloy.

Image copyright: Jaguar Land Rover Ltd

Following the success of this project, Jaguar Land Rover are working on a new project "REALCAR2" in which they have begun exploring wider recycling opportunities, including recycled aluminium from post-consumer sources. They aim to produce vehicles, not just with body panels made from this recycled metal, but with up to 75% of the entire car being made from it.

Nick Rogers, Group Engineering Director, said: “Innovation is at the heart of everything we do at Jaguar Land Rover. We are driven by the desire to produce increasingly world-class, light-weight, vehicles, but we also want to be world leading in how we build them.

“Innovative projects such as REALCAR demonstrate our commitment to meeting our sustainability challenges head-on. Its success so far marks a significant step towards our goal of having up to 75 per cent recycled aluminium content in our vehicle body structures by 2020.”

CarTakeBack are proud to be the official car recycler for Jaguar Land Rover. When you recycle your old car with us it could be used to make a new Jaguar or Land Rover, soon to be on a dealership forecourt!

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