A Review of Challenges and Opportunities for End-of-Life Vehicle Recycling in Developing Countries and Emerging Economies: A SWOT Analysis

The importance of recycling end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) has been widely acknowledged as a means of reducing ELV waste to the environment. This reduced environmental waste contributes to achieving a number of UN SDGs, including the creation of sustainable cities. The recovery of secondary resources, such as metals, from the recycling of ELVs also reduces over-dependence on primary resources. This promotes efficient resource utilization and resource conservation. While recycling systems have been established and laws governing ELV recycling have been implemented in some developed countries, there are no such systems in much of the world, and regulations are few if any. To determine the challenges and opportunities for ELV recycling in developing countries, the literature on ELV recycling processes and activities was reviewed, and a SWOT analysis was done based on the data compiled from the literature, to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. From the SWOT analysis, the common features identified as opportunities were large market size, low labor cost, and the presence of recyclers of ELV parts. The common strengths were identified to be the vehicle registration system, vehicle manufacturing, ELV legislation, ELV recycling, and the waste management system. In the case of weaknesses, the identified features were the technological capacity, waste regulatory framework, vehicle deregistration, ELV regulatory framework, environmental impact and pollution, and the lack of access to information regarding ELVs, and ELV recycling infrastructure. The common threats were perceived as the little attention given to ELV recycling by the governing authorities, the difficulty of doing business, and political and social instability. The results of the SWOT analysis also showed that the opportunities were considerable and the threats were significant for all of the countries in this study. The weaknesses were significant in Nigeria and the other developing countries, and the strengths of the emerging economies tended to be greater. While weaknesses and threats were clearly identified by the SWOT analysis, the SWOT analysis also revealed the strengths and opportunities for recycling ELVs in developing and emerging countries.