| GRN Recycle Talk FAQ Answer |
Date: Tue, 3 Aug 1999 10:33:10 -0400 (EDT) From: FRIEDMAN.FRED@EPA.GOV (Fred Friedman) Subject: Re: Recycling of plastic parts from vehicles (Linda Govan)
August 3, 1999
Dear Linda Govan,
Yes there is a market for plastic parts for motor vehicles. Yes, they can be recycled. However, there are difficulties involved: many different polymers are used in a single vehicle and the entire spectrum are used in all different vehicles. Single polymer components are often too small to justify the cost of dismantling; the economic problem is that most auto parts manufacturers already reuse plastics only minimally and aren't willing to get involved in expanding that part of their business.
There are good discussions of this in Waste Minimization and Recycling Repot, published by Government Institutes, Inc., Rockville, MD from April, 1995 and by the Vehicle Recycling Partnership (composed of the US Big 3 automakers' research opertions).
Also check the annual conference programs of the Society of Automotive Engineers, which, as of at least 1993, due to the vRP's interest, had taken a professional interest in recycling issues concerning motor vehicles.
There are markets for recycled auto plastics in Erope and in the US. I don't know about Australia, although my guess would be absolutely, yes due to costs of transport of new vehicles and parts.
One more challenge was discussed by students at California State Plytechnic. Under the hood plastics present a special recycling challenge due to the materialsa stress conditions that are placed on components of old cars. The solution 5to that is probably decontamination in solvents such as acetone, and shredding of the plastics, especially PET, HDPE, and others based on petro-chemicals, and their reconsistitution or remanufacturing.
- Research Library for RCRA