# End-of-Life Impact on the Cradle-to-Grave LCA of Light-Duty Commercial Vehicles in Europe
## 1 Introduction
### State of the Art and the Contribution of the Present Study  
Regarding ELVs, according to the most recent literature review conducted by [2], the existing literature mainly regards waste management, reverse logistic network design, and economic assessment. Regarding waste management, many works [3; 4; 9; 10; 11; 12; 13; 14] exist and can be useful in supporting an LCA study, though they do not calculate environmental impacts. Examples of reverse logistic network studies are [5; 15; 16; 17; 18], while examples of economic assessments are [19; 20]. In addition, some works focus on specific aspects that concern ELVs. The authors of [7; 21; 22; 23; 24; 25; 26] focus on the specific treatment of the ASR fraction, while [27; 28; 29; 30] focus on plastic and steel recovery from ELVs. The authors of [31] focused on rare earth element recovery from ELVs, while [32] focuses on the recovery of the bumper. Finally, the authors of [10; 33] conduct a scenario analysis, varying the level of deconstruction. According to [34], few publications concerning the LCA of vehicles include the EoL stage, and for those that do, even fewer of them evaluate environmental impact categories other than GWP. According to [35], assessing the environmental profile of a vehicle based only on GWP would lead to unrealistic conclusions, as the load of further impact categories could be mainly located in the EoL stage. Among the usually neglected categories, resource depletion is rarely analyzed, even though it should be of primary importance in the assessment of the effect of the EoL stage since it considers the speed rate at which resources are consumed, and ELVs are one of the most valuable sources of secondary raw materials. In addition, more than 95% of the papers analyzed in [34] cover passenger cars, disregarding other means of transport, such as light-, medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicles. In the following, there are examples of LCA studies that include the EoL stage and a wide range of environmental impact categories. Although LCA is performed in [36], which considers three EoL scenarios that vary by technology level, the study is limited to passenger cars and the Chinese context. It was found that the main environmental impact category that affected EoL is the human toxicity potential and that, when enhancing the recovery of the engine, the nonmetallic and ASR fractions would effectively improve the environmental benefits [36]. The LCA methodology is used in [9] in order to evaluate the environmental performance resulting from three different ELV waste management scenarios considering a dismantler plant in Portugal. It was found that the scenario that includes the supplementary dismantling of the components is the only one that allows for the accomplishment of the target imposed by the European Union [9]. Both in [35] and [37], the comparative LCAs between the different cars are performed with varying vehicle configurations (conventional and electric). Despite the fact that the focus of [35] is not on EoL, it was found that the impact of EoL is surprisingly negligible in all the impact categories considered [35]. In [37], the incidence of different allocation methods was evaluated. It was found that the allocation method has a significant influence on the LCA results [37]; nevertheless, the study heavily relies on secondary data. Moreover, [9; 35; 37]are limited to passenger cars. Despite referring to a non-European context, a series of noteworthy publications [3; 38; 39] focus on the LCA of ELVs. These studies distinguish between vehicles that have reached the end of their useful life and those that have been involved in accidents [3; 38; 39]. It was found that the latter achieve greater parts and/or materials recovery since they are the ones \"lightly used\" [3]. Even though useful LCIs based on the primary data of a North American dismantler can be found in [39], in [3; 38; 39], the environmental impacts are not calculated, and no difference is made between vehicle configurations.