Recycling in the automotive industry

Daventry, UK. A brief look at recycling at one of the country's leading motor recycling plants, Autogreen. Some vehicles have a long life others for whatever reason may be short. However all vehicles have to be recycled at the end of their usefulness. Autogreen have many hundreds of vehicles going through various stages of recycling, they are vehicle breakers and specialists in their field. Vehicles arrive daily by transporter and no matter what marque they all go through the same process. On arrival they have their fluids drained, both fuel and oil, wheels removed, catalytic converters removed, and ultimately they are broken and turned into metal bales ready to be taken to another plant for further treatment. Companies like this have to weather the price storms, at the moment the price for metal is down, but like all commodities it fluctuates. A team of long serving specialists strips each car, stacks them four high on special racking if required, health and safety is top of the agenda here. They are a team, each looking after his/her team mates. During the breaking process engines and wiring looms are seperated from the bodies, these are also stripped down if required. Some components are dealt with immediately, like the wiring and catalytic converters. It is important to reclaim the copper and precious metals such as platinum, rhodium, and palladium. This is a process that will carry on as long as we have cars. Someone has to be the undertaker of the automotive industry, without these specialist recycling plants our country would be over run by rusty vehicles leaching potentially hazardous fuels and more into our society.

Picture shows a catalytic converter being cut from a car to preserve it precious metals.