Giannouli, M; de Haan, P; Keller, M; Samaras, Z
This paper presents the model developed within the TRENDS (TRansport and ENvironment Database System) project for the prediction of waste produced from road vehicles, both at their end-of-life and during vehicle operation. The model covers passenger cars and light-duty commercial vehicles on a detailed level, and heavy-duty vehicles and buses with less detail. The computer model forecasts the waste produced by road transport in Europe from 1990 to 2020 in annual steps. In analogy to the well-known emission factors, which indicate the amount of airborne emissions per kilometre travelled by a vehicle, so-called waste factors were derived which express the amount of waste produced, both per vehicle kilometre (for waste from vehicle operation), and per vehicle scrapped (for waste from end-of-life vehicles). Waste factors depend on the technology stage (EURO 11 11, etc.) of the vehicles in order to reflect the rapid change in technology and in the material composition of vehicles over the last decades. Materials covered are ferrous (iron, steel) and non-ferrous metals (aluminium, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, zinc, and mercury), various plastics and various kinds of operating liquids (lubricants, engine oil). On the side of the vehicle components, batteries and tires are included. Activity data needed for the forecast of the total annual waste production, such as the number of scrapped vehicles and the annual mileage per vehicle category and EU member country, were obtained from the so-called Road Transport model of TRENDS. Model results are presented for all material components as well as tires for the entire EU15 as time series from 1990 to 2020. They were validated against data originating from various sources, including the European Environment Agency and the European Tyre Recycling Association. Finally, methods for the future enhancement of the quality of the model forecasts are discussed. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.