Vehicle recycling

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Vehicle recycling or automobile scrapping is the dismantling of vehicles for spare parts. At the end of their useful life, vehicles have value as a source of spare parts and this has created a vehicle dismantling industry. The industry has various names for its business outlets including wrecking yard, auto dismantling yard, car spare parts supplier, and recently, auto or vehicle recycling. Vehicle recycling has always occurred to some degree but in recent years manufacturers have become involved in the process. A car crusher is often used to reduce the size of scrapped vehicles for simplified transportation to a steel mill.

Approximately 12-15 million vehicles reach the end of their useful life each year in just the United States alone. These automobiles, although no longer roadworthy, can still have a purpose by giving back the metal and other recyclable materials that are contained in them. The vehicles are shredded and the metal content is recovered for recycling, while in many areas, the rest is further sorted by machine for recycling of additional materials such as glass and plastics. The remainder, known as automotive shredder residue, is put into a landfill.

The shredder residue that is not recovered for metal contains many other recyclable materials; 30% of it may be polymers, and 5-10% of it residual metals. Modern vehicle recycling attempts to be as cost-effective as possible in recycling those residual materials.^[1] Currently, 75% of the materials can be recycled, with the remaining 25% ending up in landfill.^[2] As the most recycled consumer product, end-of-life vehicles provide the steel industry with more than 14 million tons of steel per year.^[3]