Last week, Audi announced an ambitious recycling pilot project. It has partnered with 15 organizations to use recycled materials from old cars in the production of new cars without compromising quality. One of the 15 companies is Circularise, which uses blockchain as part of the recycling and traceability process for digital product passports.

“The MaterialLoop project underlines our ambitious vision to operate a highly efficient circular economy concept for end-of-life vehicles,” said Audi CEO Markus Duesmann. “Our goal is to recover as many materials as possible at a high level of quality and reuse them in production.”

With most recycling, the materials are extracted and sold to third parties to be used in any relevant application. The difference here is that Audi wants to use its own recycled materials.

Late last year, as a first step, Audi took 100 used cars and dismantled them as part of MaterialLoop. The large plastic panels were immediately reused and he classified the remaining bodies into different types of materials. One of the results was the creation of steel coils containing 12 percent MaterlalLoop materials and will be used to create some 15,000 pieces of interior doors for the Audi A4.

“With digital product passports we can support traceability and accounting of materials, processes and impacts at every step of the value chain,” said Mesbah Sabur, founder of Circularise. “This makes it easier for auto suppliers and OEMs to accurately measure the LCA (life cycle assessment) and carbon footprint of vehicles, as well as make more informed decisions regarding the production of circular vehicles.” Circularise provided its product passports to all project partners.

Audi is part of the VW Group and Circularise previously partnered with Porsche for the traceability of plastics. The company sees its digital product passports as important to the EU battery passport regulation that will come into effect in 2026. Other blockchain organizations that have produced battery solutions include Everledger, which partnered with Ford, Circulor with Volvo and Jaguar and MOBI, which developed the first electric. vehicle (EV) battery standard in which Ford was also a partner.