Plastic materials

Recycling does not allow obtaining a component equal to the starting product because the material may not guarantee the necessary characteristics of reliability or may not be convenient.

From the plastics which make up the seat upholstery insulating materials are obtained for building. For other plastic materials recycling is carried out in the following way: for example from the plastics for the bumpers the material is obtained for the wheel arch liners which later become elements for sound-insulation covers and finally end up as fuel for ovens.

Recycling thereby involves three successive generations of vehicles, making a contribution to saving raw materials.

This model has been designed so that all the plastic and rubber materials more than 50 grams in weight have been marked with coded symbols to allow the recognition of the material during recycling and so that all components can be recycled.

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Plastic materials

A basic requirement for achieving the objective of recycling plastic materials is their immediate recognition. Different families of plastic materials are in fact (with rare exceptions) incompatible with one another at a pressing level.

Fiat Auto has introduced marking on the entire range for recycling all plastic components. This procedure means that when the vehicle is being scrapped (at the end of its life) the exact composition of each component can be ascertained from the special ISO 1043 codes (International Standard Organization) and therefore the appropriate method of recycling can be adopted for each of them. All the polypropelene bumpers, the wheel arches and certain types of bands and spoilers are recovered to be reused. The material undergoes washing and "flotation" treatments (to separate pollutant elements such as metals, stones or other types of plastics). After this preparatory treatment the material is then ground and extruded into granules which can be used for pressing new components.