So you know it’s possible to have a car crushed, cut up and processed into something new, right? It’s a process that’s being going on across hundreds of British scrapyards for decades now and it’s pretty clear that those in charge of such efforts are making a good living out of it. All well and good for those involved, but from a standard car owner’s perspective, is there really any benefit to be taken from car recycling? 
After all, the thought of paying a company to take your car only to make even more money from it isn’t exactly appealing to anyone.
The Easy Option
The above statement may have been true in years gone by, but things are quite different these days. It seems that it was only ever going to be a matter of time until folk stopped being happy/willing to pay for scrap yards to take their investments off their hands and instead demanded fair compensation in return. What’s more, it became less and less common for drivers to make the deliveries of their scrap vehicles themselves – collection became the order of the day.
As such, we’re now living in a time when scrapping a car means making a phone call, agreeing on a price for the car and sitting back while those taking it off your hands do exactly that – the best even offer same day service. So when you compare this to the costs, aggravation and lack of guarantees that come with selling a rust-bucket, scrapping has become the easier option by quite a margin.
Economic and Environmental Benefits
So these are the benefits to the owner of the car established, but what about the bigger picture?
Well, recent decades have brought along an all-new boom to the steel recycling industry – up to 85% of all the materials found in a car can be recycled and 65% of the vehicle is steel. The price of steel varies in accordance with market conditions on a global basis, but on the whole contributes billions of pounds to the economy every single year.
As it stands, a full 14 million tons of steel from cars is recycled each and every year, which contributes in a big way to the total annual steel recycling tally of 76 million tons. We’ve become a world that depends on recycled steel to get by and it’s estimated that more than 90% of every single steel item you’ll come across in your lifetime will be recycled. In fact, most cans and disposables you use that contain steel may already be on their third, fourth or fifth life cycle!
The real beauty is that to recycle steel uses approximately 75% less energy than it takes to manufacture and distribute brand new steel, so the overall energy savings the industry facilitates are truly staggering. If recycling efforts were stepped up and everyone got well and truly involved, we’d be able to create something of an endless reuse cycle whereby the steel already in use would be recycled over and over again, meaning almost no new steel would need to be produced at all!
Recycling a car can benefit the owner, the scrap dealer, the economy and the environment as a whole – THAT is why you should be doing it!
