This initiative is being supported by the European Commission, which has selected the project for its LIFE (l'Instrument Financier pour l'Environnement) program, created to assist the development of solutions to environmental problems facing the EU.

Working with partners SITA (the waste management company, not the information and communications one), EADS CCR, Sogerma Services and the Prefecture des Hautes-Pyrenees, Airbus will set up a facility in southwest France at Tarbes Airport, where procedures for the decommissioning and recycling of aircraft in environmentally controlled conditions will be tested. Called PAMELA (Process for Advanced Management of End-of-Life of Aircraft), the EUR2.4 million project aims to set best practice in this field while demonstrating that 85 percent to 95 percent of aircraft components can be recycled, reused or recovered.

Airbus' Julien Dezombre, PAMELA Project's technical manager, said the objective of PAMELA is to set a benchmark for the safe and environmentally friendly management of end-of-life aircraft, covering the whole process from storage at decommissioning, disassembling and dismantling to the recycling or elimination of constituent materials.

"That's why we wanted to share this project with waste management companies like SITA," said Dezombre, "because they specialize in processes to recycle and recover used materials - for example, plastics, tires and batteries.

"The first A300 aircraft, which should arrive at Tarbes in the next few months, will be used to establish the best method of dismantling the airframe; in particular, the best way to section the airframe to assist the separation of different materials. Indeed, the project allows us up to two years to innovate and develop the most efficient processes."

Airbus' Jean-Baptiste Gambini, director, material process and customer support, believes it would be possible to recycle most of the airframe, depending on process investment.

"Most of the wing and fuselage structures are primarily aluminum," he said. "Okay, they all have protective coatings, but this can be tackled once the metal has been melted. Batteries can also cause problems, but they can be broken down into constituent parts and materials, separated and sorted. In principle, there's nothing that can't be recycled," said Gambini.

Airbus itself will not be involved in developing recycling processes but, as an aircraft manufacturer, can provide the precise location of different materials and the knowledge to assist disassembly - for example, the best way to remove the wings, tail-plane etc., to facilitate the most efficient separation of different materials. Much will be learned from cutting up the first airframe which, as a learning exercise, is expected to take two to three days.

At Tarbes, aircraft will be drained of their fluid and part-disassembled - engines, pylons, landing gears, avionic boxes, flight controls, batteries and hydraulic pumps removed - before the airframes are divided (outside) into manageable pieces. Engine recycling is not included in the PAMELA project, so that should be carried out separately by other contractors.