Did you know that an estimated four million cars disappear in Europe every year? This means that cars that are no longer roadworthy are not recycled as required by law but can end up in backyards and on the side of the road. Nor are they necessarily removed from the vehicle register.  These are ghost cars that cause all kinds of problems. Valuable materials such as metal, plastic, rubber and glass aren't recycled, and car wrecks also have a negative impact on the environment. It is estimated that there are tens of thousands of ghost cars in Finland. Now the Finns have come up with a scalable solution to a global problem.

Finnish Car Recycling Ltd (Suomen Autokierrätys) is a producer association that coordinates the collection, treatment, and recycling of end-of-life vehicles as required by law. They have developed a new operating system, which will tackle the ghost car problem, and will be introduced during this spring. According to CEO Juha Kenraali, the system will bring about significant changes in the sector. It will provide new, valuable, and transparent data on the different stages of the recycling process.

"In practice, a digital twin is created of the car sent for recycling, and a wide range of data is generated on the stages of the scrapping process. AI is used to assess the potential for reusing parts of the car, or to predict how much material can be recycled from each car," says Kenraali.

Knowing what can be reused from a single car gives an understanding of what is worth scrapping and what is worth recycling. The car's journey can be followed from start to finish and all the necessary data is available to those involved in the car recycling ecosystem.

"The actors involved can look at the situation, for example, at a regional level, and assess which spare parts are available in which region and where they are needed," explains Kenraali.

The system has significant export potential

The idea for efficient, data-based car recycling was born between Finnish Car Recycling and its partners, and the development work involved logistics operators who are enthusiastic about digitalisation and the data economy. One of the people involved in the discussions was Matti Lankinen, CEO of Vediafi Oy. 

"When we were thinking in practice about how to advance the open data economy on the logistics side, this need for ghost car processing came up. The resulting operating model is completely unique in Europe," says Lankinen.

• What causes the ghost car problem? How can location data boost the recycling business?: Finns solved the ghost car problem – more location innovation needed for a circular economy

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