* Missing details: lead (e.g. batteries), mercury (e.g. antilock brakes) and PVC (e.g. cable). Lead and mercury are very important to consider because they are persistent or bioaccumulative toxics.

The following is the process for retiring a vehicle. First, retired vehicles are sent to the dismantler. The dismantler keeps the parts of value while the rest, called the hulk, is then sent to the shredders. After the shredder, some materials are recycled and the others are considered residue.  At the end, 75% of vehicle weight is reused or recycled (tires, converters, parts of value and a variety of metals) and 25% is disposed as Auto Shredded Residues, which includes lead, mercury and PVC.

Extended Producer Responsibility creates the opportunity to optimize vehicle design to address not only use-stage impacts, but end-of-life issues as well.  Overall, EPR maximizes the quantity of materials that the vehicle-recycling infrastructure captures.