Cardboard, plastics, glass… car? Stellantis plots bin day for your old motor

Most of us are used to putting the recycling out for bin day, but what if you also had the option of leaving your car (yes, your car) out with your used cereal boxes and jam jars?

Like this Audi project and this eBay spares plant, Stellantis (remember, the behemoth that owns everything from Vauxhall to Fiat) could soon have your old motor collected so that it can be stripped for parts that’ll be reused or recycled into new vehicles.

Which raises… many questions. Will this mean yet another recycling box-slash-bag for the driveway? Do we need to look for that three-arrows logo to check if our car’s recyclable? If you buy a new Astra in 2027, will it have the indicator stalks from an old Corsa VXR?

Maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves. You see, Stellantis has signed a memorandum of understanding with metals recycling company Galloo to negotiate ‘a form of joint venture on end-of-life vehicle recycling’. So no actual deal struck just yet.

“Making it easy for customers to recycle their end-of-life vehicles is a crucial element to reduce the environmental impact of our vehicles,” said Alison Jones, Stellantis’s senior vice president for global circular economy. “Returning parts and materials to the value chain preserves scarce resources and helps our drive to reach carbon net zero by 2038. We look forward to implementing the program this year and quickly expanding.”

If established the operation would first focus on France, Belgium and Luxembourg before expanding, with services also offered to other carmakers.

So are we looking at weekly collections, or will Old Car Day be every third Wednesday?