CAA Magazine: Sum of its parts
CAA Magazine: Sum of its parts
A car’s afterlife is a mystery to most. A tow truck carts it off, or you trade it in at a dealership, then it’s out of sight, out of mind. But that tired old vehicle has plenty of potentials to live on in other ways, proving that the parts can actually be worth more than the whole.
There’s a thriving industry making a profit from end-of-life vehicles (ELVs). About 1.6 million vehicles make their final exit from Canadian roads every year, and about 95 percent of cars are eventually recycled, says Steve Fletcher, managing director of the Automotive Recyclers of Canada (ARC) association, which represents about 400 of the 1,600 to 1,700 auto recyclers across the country.
Old vehicles are worth a lot more than the $150 to $300 you get selling them to a wrecking yard. Auto recyclers—who do not want to be confused with scrap yards or junkyards— know that crushing an old vehicle is the last thing that should happen to it, if at all. Technically, at least 75 percent of every car can be recycled or recovered, Fletcher says, and with advanced technologies that number edges closer to 95 percent. In the Netherlands, for example, they recover more plastic from vehicles than they do in Canada, but these processes are expensive and are pursued because of government mandates.
