Recycling old cars and their parts into new products

26 October, 2022 By: Byron Mathioudakis

If you have a shiny new car, it could well have been around in a different form before it was your new car, maybe as a gate or even a dishwasher.

Conversely, if you’ve got an old clunker that needs updating, it might someday form part of a computer or airliner fuselage.

In Australia, about 80 per cent of a new vehicle can be recycled. Most of it is the steel, plastics, glass and rubbers. But in some countries, that figure can rise to 97 per cent, driven by laws dictating specific processes. That’s also set to happen here, thanks to a new end-of-vehicle-life scheme to be implemented by the Motor Trades Association of Australia and the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, starting sometime in 2023.

Once a car reaches the end of the road, it often ends up being sent to a metal recyclers by wreckers/parts recyclers, after they have taken all the useful and profitable parts off them. Some car wreckers, metal recyclers or their contractors will also collect car bodies or whole cars directly from owners.

So, here are some of the ways that a vehicle’s parts and materials are being recycled into a new form and given a second life.

Metals – ferrous

Ferrous metal contains iron, like steel, wrought iron, cast iron, carbon steel and alloys of iron such as stainless steel. Since the 1930s, most car bodies use steel, while iron is often found in engine, drive shaft, suspension, steering and chassis components.

When these and other parts are stripped from a body, the remaining steel hulk is crushed and sent to be recycled into anything metal – be it other vehicles, white goods, building materials, electrical goods… you name it.

Metals – non-ferrous

Then there are metals that don’t contain iron as used throughout the history of the automobile, like aluminium, copper, zinc, nickel, lead, titanium, brass, bronze, tin and even silver. By their very nature, they are corrosion resistant.

As such, their recovery from old cars is valuable across the entire spectrum of manufacturing, from the smallest electronics to the largest building or civil structures. As with ferrous metals, their recycling potential is pretty much endless.

Carmakers are increasingly switching to aluminium to cut weight and fuel consumption. Although it is energy-intensive to make and more difficult to shape than steel, aluminium does present greater recyclability than some steels because of its inherent strength and rust resistance, as well as the potential energy savings in not having to make it from scratch.

Plastics

Around 50 per cent of your vehicle by volume is plastic, or nearly 10 per cent by weight.

The majority is Polypropylene or a combination of that with other plastics like polycarbonates, polyamides, polyesters, polyurethanes, acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) and thermoplastic olefins.

These are most often found in bumpers, fuel tanks, headlight casings, dashboards, consoles, door cards, interior panels, inner bodyshell panels, seating, upholstery and carpet, in part due to their lightness, cheapness, durability and malleability into endless shapes.

In theory, almost all of that is recyclable into practically every other plastic item available, and beyond automotive applications.

Historically, the ways plastics are separated and treated for recycling varies from country to country, and estimates say that up to 90 per cent in some cases ends up as either lower quality ‘downcycling’ material with reduced usability and increased disposability that eventually turns into useless waste anyway, or landfill. Bad news.

Nowadays, industry and governments globally are introducing far-stricter recycling methods to help ensure correct processes to maximise efficiency and minimise waste. Whether a household or a corporation, plastics need to be sorted correctly.

There have been technological breakthroughs, too. Plastics can now be ground down and essentially treated with electricity to create graphene ¬– a foldable and durable material that’s a fraction of the width of paper yet stronger than diamond, that conducts heat and electricity better than copper or gold.

From plastic garbage to fantastic graphene - this is a great advance, and part of the circular economy movement that creates new from old with minimal outside resources.

Motor oil

When your car is surrendered over for recycling, the first thing that happens is all the toxic fluids are safely drained.

The several litres of motor oil per vehicle is cleaned and recycled to create fuel for industrial burners, hydraulic oil, bitumen for road building, industrial lubricants, additives as found in manufactured products and even as raw material for the petroleum industry in making new motor oil.

So, please don’t pour it down the drain. Oil is extremely toxic for the environment. Your local council transfer station will have dedicated disposal facilities - check your local council website. Some vehicle workshops may also let you dispose of used oil in their oil recycling tank.

Glass/windscreens

In the past, windscreens have included plastics within the glass to make them shatterproof, but this has limited their recyclability.

However, recent manufacturing advances means the two materials can be more easily separated, to be melted down and reused in other glass items like windows, bottles and fibreglass insulation.

12-volt batteries

In modern vehicles, up to 97 per cent of lead acid batteries is recyclable – with 85 per cent of the lead going back into new batteries. The plastic casing is turned into plastic pellets for scores of other products and the rest can be reused in glass, textiles and other specific construction industry materials. However, the two to three litres of sulphuric acid must be treated and sent to a waste facility.

Tyres

Tyre disposal has been a monumental problem for over a century.

It is estimated that while up to 25 million tyres reach the end of their useful life in Australia annually, fewer than four million (about 15 per cent) are recycled. The rest end up in landfill, are stockpiled, dumped or exported as waste, often ending up as harmful furnace fuel in Asia.

Of the tyres that are recycled, the rubber that makes up around 78 per cent of their construction is often crushed, mostly to make soft ground covering in playgrounds and parks, in sports fields, on athletic tracks, as building insulation material, as non-slip material in marine environments and as flooring in industrial and commercial premises.

Recycled rubber has also been used in the maintenance of roads – more specifically in asphalt or spray seal. Among other benefits, they help provide a quieter surface to drive on.

More recently, a breakthrough fermentation-style process by Australian company Green Distillation Technologies has been developed for spent tyres, where heat is applied in a sealed chamber, creating chemical processes that break various compounds down into a manufactured oil, while leaving behind carbon and steel particles as well as practically no emissions. All are then collected and reused in the manufacture of other products.

The remainder of the tyre consists of steel (17 per cent) and textiles (five per cent) that have far broader recycling options.

Electric vehicle (EV) batteries

EV battery recycling will be a thing… eventually.

However, as the technology is still emerging and evolving – the first modern volume-selling EV did not launch globally until 2010 (Nissan Leaf) while the bestselling EV of all time (Tesla’s Model 3) didn’t surface until 2018 – the question of what that will be remains unknown.

There haven’t been enough end-of-life EV battery modules for an industry to grow around their recycling or alternative uses. With the current lithium-ion tech powering most EVs, the battery pack is no longer considered fit for service once 30 per cent capacity is lot. In modern EVs, a loss in capacity by this much would occur over eight years at least, and in most EVs this kind of deterioration would take longer in normal use.

Almost all EV manufacturers warrant the high voltage batteries in their EVs for eight years. For example, Nissan offers an eight-year, 160,000km warranty against one of their batteries losing more than 25 per cent of their capacity within that time and distance.

Of course, with up to 70 per cent capacity still available, it is thought that a “second life” will exist for EV battery modules as energy storage devices for electricity networks. This is an ideal scenario, as static energy storage is less taxing on the battery tech than having to provide constant energy to power EVs.

But this isn’t recycling; it’s merely a re-application of the battery. Debate still rages on what can be viably and economically recycled in an EV battery pack, how much impact that will have on the environment and – perhaps most importantly – what the demand will be for them.

The fate of battery EV recycling may take longer to determine than first thought.

One senior car company executive told Forbes magazine back in August 2022 that EV battery packs seem to be lasting longer than anticipated, due to their in-built safeguards that are designed to maximise their shelf life.

“Almost all of the (electric car) batteries we’ve ever made are still in cars,” according to Nissan UK marketing director and the company’s former global EV business head, Nic Thomas. “And we’ve been selling electric cars for 12 years.”

As it turns out, even with most manufacturers offering separate battery warranties of eight years/160,000km, it raises the possibility that a well-cared-for battery could outlast the rest of the vehicle.