Trash or Treasure?
At first, the Cash for Clunkers program conjured visions of perfectly good cars rotting in, what I imagined to be, large metal graveyards – vehicles emitting toxins as they waited their turn to be crushed into twisted metal cubes. Upon further investigation, it turns out the Cash for Clunkers initiative isn’t as bad as I thought, however, it might not be as good as I’d hoped either.
According to CCNMoney.com, almost 100% of car parts today are recycled. Sandy Blalock, former president of the Automotive Recyclers Association (ARA), was quoted for the article saying, “The automobile is the most recycled component in the world. Almost 100% of a car is recycled, except for the fluff, which is going to the landfill.” In fact, there is an entire economy surrounding the recycling of scrapped car parts. UncommonGoods, a Brooklyn-based online retailer sells glassware made of recycled windshield glass. If this is the fate of Cash for Clunkers vehicles, I’d feel pretty good about the whole endeavor.
However, upon further investigation I found that there are pitfalls within the Cash for Clunkers model that make recycling difficult. First, the program requires dealers to dismantle the vehicle’s engines by replacing the clunker’s oil with a solution that causes the engine’s parts to freeze, so that it will never run again. According to the current executive VP of the ARA, Michael Wilson, functioning engines are the most valuable part of a scrapped car, so dismantling them cancels out the programs greatest environmental benefit. CNNMoney.com quoted Wilson, “We think that [the program] is going to have a minimal environmental benefit, if any.”
Ok, so the engine isn’t usable, but what about all of the other parts – like the glass, plastic and metal? Cash for Clunkers puts a kink in that as well. The program demands that clunkers are shredded within 180 days, which causes a large portion of perfectly recyclable vehicles to be shredded before the parts can be gotten to.
The real impact of this program, both economically and environmentally, won’t be known for a while. There’s still data to be gathered and statistics to be made before any real understanding of its implications can be known. I can only hope that the emissions saved by replacing cars rated 18 mpg’s or less with cars that have upwards of 25 mpg’s will offset any negative byproducts.
September 4, 2009 at 5:46 pm
As an alternative to the knee-jerk of having to purchase a a new car, air flow systems are currently being modified in all types of vehicles so that the air will help burn more of the already existing fuel supply in an engine. The end results of more of the fuel being burned are of course, more power and less emissions exiting the engine to pollute the air.
For referrence, you can see a Califonia smog test of a 7-year old, stock, non-hybrid Honda Civic that produces ZERO HCs, zero CO at 25mph and beautifully low NOx here:
http://engineecology.com/smogtest.html
September 8, 2009 at 3:44 pm
This is really interesting. While I’m very familiar with modifications that increase horsepower, I admit, I know nothing about modificiations to decrease emissions. This is definitely an area I’ll have to explore. Is there additional material you recommend?