Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC), in partnership with Yazaki Corporation, Toyota Tsusho Corporation, and eight other companies, has developed a technology for recycling  copper contained in wiring harnesses.
When wiring harnesses are removed from end-of-life vehicles under conventional methods, it is extremely difficult to separate the copper from the fuse box and other components. As a result, it has not been possible until now to recycle harnesses using mechanical sorting methods.
The companies started collaborating in 2010 in a number of areas including establishing pre-processing quality requirements for dismantling companies.
In 2011, TMC developed a mechanical sorting method that can prevent contamination from minute impurities.
Trial production involving small amounts of recycled copper began at TMC’s Honsha Plant in 2013. Once quality had been assessed by Yazaki, the copper was introduced to the wiring harness manufacturing line.
Stable production involving recycled copper has been achieved, and annual production of recycled copper using this method will increase to approximately 1’000 tons in 2016.
This new technology is the result of TMC’s first collaboration with parts makers and dismantling companies in Japan on next-generation recycling systems.
Toyota will continue to enhance this technology while reducing costs and expanding collaborative efforts, Toyota said. The company will also create an ongoing next-generation recycling project with parts makers and dismantling companies with the aim of fostering a recycling-based society.
The newly-developed technology produces copper with a purity of 99.96 percent, the company said.