Automobile for Recycling Ieasure Ed and It Will

Public opinion polls consistently show a high percentage of the U.S. population, typically more than 75 percent, consider themselves to be environmentalists. One of the issues that environmentalists feel most strongly about is recycling. In many communities there is an almost religious fervor surrounding recycling. Unfortunately, there also appears to be widespread misunderstanding regarding the extent to which recycling can contribute to solving our environmental problems and how far we have already gone with recycling. For example, it is not generally kno& that motor vehicles are already among the most widely recycled products in the marketplace; 75 percent, by weight, of vehicle materials are currently being recycled. The recycling rate for aluminum beverage containers is around 60 percent. There is a very well-developed infrastructure in existence that efficiently recycles essentially all the metallic components of vehicles. This case study will describe the current state of recycling of automotive materials in the economy and some of the trade-offs among environmental benefits that must be faced to achieve increased recycling. Recent successes have been achieved with lead-acid vehicle batteries (achieving 95 percent lead recycle rates, thanks to the efforts of Battery Council Intemational), with chlorofluorocarbons used in vehicle air conditioners, and with coolants (recovered by automobile dealerships). There is also progress in dealing with tires, oils, and other materials consumed during operation of a vehicle. The major focus, however, of a new organization dedicated to increasing the recycling of automobiles, the Vehicle Recycling Partnership, formed recently by General Motors (GM), Ford, and Chrysler, will be the postconsumer fate of the nonmetallic components of the vehicle body and powertrain. At present, there is a high recy-