BMW has announced its plans to use plastic waste from fishing nets and ropes to produce trim parts such as floor mats for some of its upcoming cars.
The German luxury automaker will deploy an exclusive recycling process for waste material from the maritime industry to produce materials for exterior and interior of its BMW iX, BMW X1 and the much-awaited Neue Klasse.
The raw materials will be sourced from ports all around the world to create auto components, which will contain around 30% of the recycled material and have an approximately 25% lower carbon footprint than their counterparts made from conventionally manufactured plastics.
The company said that it is working on different approaches to use plastic waste to reduce the need for petroleum-based primary plastics and at the same time counteract ocean pollution.
This new initiative is launched in cooperation with PLASTIX, a Denmark based tech recycling company, which has developed processes to recycle plastic fibres and rigid plastics.
The BMW Group also announced its self-set target of increasing the proportion of secondary materials in the thermoplastics used in new vehicles from currently around 20% to an average of 40% by 2030.