TOKYO, Japan, September 16, 2025 – Honda R&D Co., Ltd. (Honda) today announced that it has developed a new “chemical sorting” technology, which sorts and extracts reusable plastics from waste plastic parts that contain solid contaminants unique to automotive waste. Honda will build a pilot facility with a maximum processing capacity of 350 tons per year and verify the technology by the end of 2026, striving to put it into practical use by around 2029.
The solid contaminant separation technology newly developed by Honda uses chemical sorting, that dissolves the resin in a solvent to remove solid contaminants and extract high-purity resin. Waste automotive plastic parts generally contain non-plastic solid contaminants such as metal inserts*1, pieces of rubber hoses and gaskets, and reinforcing materials such as glass fiber contained in the resin. To date, recycling of waste plastic parts containing solid contaminants has been done mostly through “physical sorting” processes which sort contaminants manually or by machine. However, recycling via physical sorting has various challenges, including an increase in cost associated with the sorting process.
The use of the newly-developed chemical sorting technology enabled Honda to improve the solid contaminant separation rate to more than 99%, which previously has not exceeded the range of approximately 80%, resulting in the extraction of high-purity plastics. After undergoing mechanical and chemical recycling processes, reusable plastics extracted through the chemical sorting technology with a purity of more than 99%, will be reused as automotive materials, enabling closed-loop recycling.