The scrap heap - what's left of hundreds of cars and other metal waste after they go through a shredder. (Photo by Tamara Keith)
All those clunkers are working their
way toward the final melt-down at
a steel mill. Lester Graham reports
you’ll see the steel from those clunkers
again:
Transcript
All those clunkers are working their
way toward the final melt-down at
a steel mill. Lester Graham reports
you’ll see the steel from those clunkers
again:
The steel from those clunkers from the “Cash for Clunkers” program will eventually be melted down and used again.
Bill Heenan is the President of the Steel Recycling Institute. He says it’ll be a few months before that scrap gets recycled.
“It takes some time for that old automobile, the clunker in this particular case, to work its way through the dismantling system and then through the shredding system and eventually to the steel mill.”
Scrap yards can remove things such as fenders or hubcaps for used parts, but what’s left – including the engines – goes to the shredder.
Bill Heenan says those 700,000 clunkers won’t mean a glut of scrap steel.
“Let’s say there’s a ton of steel in each one, you’ve got 700,000 tons. That seems like a lot. But in a given year, we recycle 80-million tons.”
That 80-million tons of scrap is melted down and becomes the bulk of new steel products in the U.S., including new cars.
For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.