Lesson 3 – ELVs as “organ donors”

Welcome to the third lesson of our online course on end-of-life vehicle recycling and environmental challenges. In this course, we will explore a variety of phases required for the disassembly of end-of-life vehicles that allow the restoration of large quantities of metals and component parts for remanufacturing.

In this course we should understand why we should use more dead machines as “organ donors”.

So once cars have reached the end of their life and are retired they are stripped piece by piece of all their useful parts, and the final step in their journey is disassembly into basic components. It’s nice to know that those core components will be reborn in another form, in some cases as parts of a new car.

‘Organ donors’ cars from ELVs [https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/features/final-destination-one-cars-end-life-journey-scrapheap]

The industry believes that increasing the use of recycled parts by 10% could save almost 190,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions each year in the manufacture of new parts and, if insurers can be persuaded to use them, would help avoid losses and perhaps even reducing the cost of insurance premiums and excesses. The main objectives of the vehicle recycling industry is to salvage as many components as possible from an old and used automobile.

Below in the given graph is a rough estimate of the recyclability of an average automobile. Thus, after the removal of fluids and hazardous materials, the components that can be recycled will be identified:

Components commonly Recycled from ELVs

Alternators, starters and injection pumps are some of the most common reconditioned components. Thus, dismantled machines can produce a number of reusable parts. Each of these may still be of value to someone else looking to purchase replacement parts for their own vehicle.

In conclusion, once the vehicle has been decontaminated, disassembled, sorted it is time for shredding, which we mean literally, because once the vehicle has been disassembled, the metal body of the car will be crushed and sent to a shredder.