JUMP, an Uber subsidiary, and Veolia have just announced their partnership to sort, recycle and recover defective and end-of-life parts on self-service Jump electric bicycles and scooters. Veolia is supporting JUMP in its efforts to recover 100% of the parts on its equipment and reduce its environmental footprint.
From waste sorting to recycling: a complete and certified process
With Veolia, JUMP undertakes to repair, recycle and recover all the parts on any bicycles or scooters that no longer work. JUMP has repair shops in each of its warehouses where its non-repairable equipment is stored. Their still functioning parts are reused on other vehicles; defective or end-of-life parts are collected by Veolia for sorting, recovery or recycling on its certified treatment sites (ISO 14 001, ISO 9001, OHSAS 18001).
More than 90% of material recovered
This is the partners’ objective for plastics and rubber, metals, electronic components and batteries: aluminium will be used to make new bicycle frames or car parts, scrap metal will become cans, precious metals such as the gold on the electronic cards could even become jewellery.
In the long term, Veolia will treat 200 batteries for JUMP on its Dieuze site in Moselle, which has been specializing in electric battery treatment for more than 10 years [see box].
Veolia: pioneering battery recycling for the past 10 years.
The various battery components are recycled after extraction, purification and concentration in complex chemical processes. For JUMP, Veolia will recover and recycle batteries to extract strategic metals such as nickel, cobalt, copper, lithium and manganese. The reuse of metals like cobalt and nickel is highly strategic for technology development: they can be reused in metallurgical applications to remanufacture special steels or in chemical applications to obtain metal salts used to make battery cells. Nowadays the lithium in the batteries (1%) comes mainly from mines or salt pans. The challenge in the coming years will be to gradually replace these virgin materials with recycled materials. The partnership between Uber and Veolia is fully in line with this approach.
How does Veolia recycle or recover the various materials in a scooter?
|
Material |
Weight |
Process |
|
Rubber |
1.66 kg |
Energy recovery |
|
Armature |
1.22 kg |
Shredding and recycling metals |
|
Plastics |
1.42 kg |
Recycling |
|
Battery pack |
2.9 kg |
Recycling + recovery of strategic metals |
|
Electronic card |
0.22 kg |
Separation of precious metals for reuse |
|
Scrap metal |
2.7 kg |
Recycling (for metal structures, cans, radiators for example) |
|
Aluminium |
3.72 kg |
Recycling (into car parts, bicycle frames, household appliances, kitchen utensils) |
|
Cables |
0.14 kg |
Separation of metals and plastics for recycling |
JUMP offers self-service electric bicycles and scooters, available directly via the Uber application. In 7 months in Paris: 150,000 JUMP users and 1 million scooter and bicycle journeys in 7 months.