DID YOU KNOW

DID YOU KNOW?

Does automotive recycling affect your life? Yes it does! Even if you are not a regular customer of the used parts industry, automotive recycling has an impact on your life.

The days of the automotive “junkyard” are fading away to an environmentally safe RECYCLER. The industry has thousands of automotive recycling facilities worldwide that recycle automobiles using environmentally safe and modernized systems. Modern auto recyclers employ over 40,000 people nationwide. These people work to process every piece of an inoperable vehicle. The gas, oil, Freon and antifreeze can all be recycled for reuse. Good parts are sold to repair shops and the public. Unusable parts are processed and scrapped for the steel, aluminum, copper, brass and tin. The automotive recycling industry processes more than 11 million vehicles every year. Can you imagine what our communities would look like if those cars and trucks were not recycled? Recycling those 11 million cars saves an estimated 85 million barrels of oil that would otherwise be used in the manufacture of new replacement parts. Those cars also provide 37% of all ferrous scrap (iron and steel) to the US scrap processing industry. This reduces pollution. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, when a mill uses scrap iron and steel in place of ore, there is a 86% reduction in air pollution, and a 76% reduction in water pollution.

We know that automotive recycling helps keep our community clean, and our environment clean. But there is more. Automotive recycling decreases our insurance rates by purchasing wrecked vehicles from your insurance company, thus allowing for recovery of financial losses. On that same note, when a vehicle is in a wreck and an estimate of repairs indicates that it is not cost effective to repair with new parts, doing the repairs with used parts can save the car. This saves the vehicle so the owner can continue to use it; it creates a job for the repair shop, which employs local people, and it, saves your insurance company money, which, down the line, saves you money on premiums.

What does the automotive recycling industry do for you?

· Helps keep your community clean

· Helps keep your environment clean

· Reduces your insurance cost

Provides you, the consumer, with a quality auto part at a fraction of the new price.

This page was last updated on May 27, 2008.