The 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid. (Photo courtesy of Ford)
New car models are hitting the
dealers’ showroom floors. Lester
Graham reports not as many fuel
efficient cars are selling in the
wake of the government’s Cash-
for-Clunkers program:
Transcript
New car models are hitting the
dealers’ showroom floors. Lester
Graham reports not as many fuel
efficient cars are selling in the
wake of the government’s Cash-
for-Clunkers program:
It’s hard to miss the ads for new models.
(montage of car advertisements)
But in September, fuel-efficient cars didn’t sell that well.
Mark Gillies is the Executive Editor for Car and Driver magazine. He says vehicles that get good gas mileage probably won’t start selling until gasoline prices go up – just like last year.
“That’s when you saw a big move to buying more fuel efficient vehicles. And I think the obvious thing about oil prices is that long term the trend is that they’re going to go up and they’re going to stay that way.”
Fuel-efficient models did sell in August because of Cash-for Clunkers, but Gillies says people bought low-end models this time because they were cheap – not necessarily because they were fuel-efficient.
Bassam Jody of Argonne National Laboratory
is helping develop novel ways of sorting and cleaning
shredder residue left over from cars, construction debris,
and major household appliances.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
Auto shredder residue is a mish-mash of metal, foam and
plastics that get ejected from car shredders.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
Argonne researchers hope to make the
process affordable for the scrap industry. They're perfecting
machines that separate plastics and other materials by
density and their proclivity to sink or float in the presence
of foamy bubbles.
(Photo by Shawn Allee)
We’ve all heard over and over again
about that government program ‘Cash
for Clunkers.’ It’s got drivers
thinking about what exactly happens
to dead cars, regardless of how they
die. Shawn Allee looks at
how car recycling works and who’s
trying to improve it:
Transcript
We’ve all heard over and over again about that government program ‘Cash for Clunkers.’ It’s got drivers thinking about what exactly happens to dead cars, regardless of how they die. Shawn Allee looks at how car recycling works and who’s trying to improve it:
You might not think about it this way, but your car just might be the biggest thing you own that gets recycled.
I mean, someday you’re going to junk it, or maybe some future owner will. Anyway, I’m out in front of a car shop in my neighborhood, and with the health of cars in mind, I thought I’d ask some people around here, percentage-wise, just how much of a junked car gets recycled?
“I would say maybe, like, 5% of the car.”
“I’ll say, 20% – 30% probably, of a car.”
“I guess the recycled one could be 30% of the car.”
“I guess, like, 50%.”
“About 70%.”
++
In my little unscientific survey here, it turns out that most people are giving a pretty low estimate of how much of a junked car ends up being recycled.
The auto industry and the federal environmental protection agency say about 80% of the junked car gets recycled. The rest heads to landfills. That sounds pretty good, but that means we bury about five million tons of junked car pieces each year.
To understand why they can’t recycle even more of the car, I’m going to talk with Jim Watson.
He runs ABC Auto Wreckers in a suburb just south of Chicago.
“We don’t want to landfill anything. The objective is to take the vehicle, process it and have all the parts be used.”
Watson shows me his shop where he pulls parts for the used market. A dozen workers lift hoods, twist tires, and pull out stuff I don’t even recognize. It’s like an assembly line in reverse.
“They do an analysis and inventory each of the parts of the car that have a probability of sale and then they harvest or pull those parts off the car.”
Watson and some of the bigger auto wreckers have parts-scrapping down to a science, but it’s expensive to keep pulling parts and keep space open for scrap yards.
Eventually, Watson’s pulls off everything usefull and he’ll send it to a car shredder.
“A machine that beats it apart and shreds the car into small fist-sized or hand-sized components.”
Recyclers can pull out big shreds of steel and aluminum, but about 20% of the car is left-over. This shredder residue gets tossed into landfills. But scientists are thinking about how to recycle this shredded mess.
One works at a lab at Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago.
“This is what shredder residue looks like.”
Dr. Bassam Jody reaches into a cardboard box and scoops a jumble of car seat foam, metal cable, wood, and shards of plastic.
Jody says shredder residue is a recycler’s nightmare.
“Maybe there are more than twenty different kinds of plastics. I tell you, plastics are generally incompatible, they don’t like each other and they don’t work together very well.”
Jody is developing machines to safely clean and separate all this stuff. It’s tough science.
Jody: “The more things you have in the mixture, the harder it is to separate. The trick is, you have to do it economically, and to produce materials that can be used in value-added products.”
Allee: “What can you make out of them?”
Jody: “Car parts. For example, this is a seating column cover.”
Jody says he gets a kick out of his work. He might just squeeze a bit more good out of our cars.
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.
Dealers across the country are running out of new cars to sell that qualify for the program. (Photo source: IFCAR at Wikimedia Commons)
Two billion dollars is being added to
the very popular Cash for Clunkers
program. The original one billion dollars
is almost gone. But, Lester Graham
reports, there’s a shortage of new cars
that qualify for the program:
Transcript
Two billion dollars is being added to
the very popular Cash for Clunkers
program. The original one billion dollars
is almost gone. But, Lester Graham
reports, there’s a shortage of new cars
that qualify for the program:
The National Automobile Dealers Association says they’ve been hearing from dealers across the country who’ve been running out of new cars that qualify for the program.
Steve Demers is the General Manager of Cueter Chrysler Jeep Dodge in Ypsilanti, Michigan, a state where Cash for clunkers has been especially popular.
“There’s virtually no vehicles available, so there are other areas in the country that may not be as – the program has not been as popular – so we’re able to pluck some of that inventory out of their states, but it’s a nation-wide problem. I mean, we’re out many, many states away, thousands of miles before we can find a vehicle that can be brought in for one of our custormers.”
Factories are shipping more cars to the dealers but can’t keep up with demand.
185,000 gas-guzzling clunkers have been turned in to be scrapped in exchange for the government incentives.
Car buyers get up to 4,500 dollars toward buying a new fuel-efficient model.
Cars stacked up and waiting to be shredded at United Iron and Metal in Baltimore, MD. (Photo by Tamara Keith)
The scrap heap, what's left of hundreds of cars and other metal waste after they go through a shredder. (Photo by Tamara Keith)
Engines in storage at All Foreign Auto Parts. This is the one piece of the car that absolutely can't be resold under the Cash for Clunkers program. (Photo by Tamara Keith)
The federal Cash for Clunkers
program kicked off this weekend,
and dealerships were pushing it
hard to sell new cars. The program
was created by Congress last month
to give a boost to the struggling
auto industry while helping the
environment. The idea is to get
older polluting cars off the road
for good and replace them with
new more-efficient ones. Tamara Keith has this report
on what will happen to all the
clunkers:
Transcript
The federal Cash for Clunkers program kicked off this weekend, and dealerships
were pushing it hard to sell new cars. The program was created by Congress last
month to give a boost to the struggling auto industry while helping the environment.
The idea is to get older polluting cars off the road for good and replace them with
new more-efficient ones. Tamara Keith has this report on what will happen to all the
clunkers:
Car dealers suddenly have a whole bunch of cars on their lots they have absolutely
no use for. The clunkers cannot be re-sold. That would defeat the whole green goal
of the program.
So all those old trucks and sagging sedans, they’re headed to places like M and M
Auto Parts in Stafford, Virginia. Most of us would call it a junk yard. But don’t tell
that to owner Rick Morrow.
“Long before green was popular, this kind of operation, even though a lot of people
said, ‘Oh junk yard.’ But they were actually recycling cars. They were making use of
what the component was built for in the first place.”
His company’s logo prominently features a large green recycling symbol.
“This is the dismantling area where after the cars come are inventoried and then take
them apart.”
Morrow’s business is all about re-use. A fender, or a tail light, or maybe an alternator
from this car will live to see another day in a car that needs a replacement part.
You’d think Morrow would be totally excited about Cash for Clunkers. But he’s not.
Because the one component from the clunkers that absolutely cannot be re-sold is
the engine – pretty much the most valuable thing in the car.
“If we do a few dozen cars and it looks like it’s costing us more money than it’s worth,
we’ll say, ‘sorry.’”
From an environmental perspective, it absolutely makes sense to prevent those
engines from ever polluting again. But, from a business perspective it’s a real
problem for the nation’s auto recyclers.
“It will make it extremely hard to make money on a car.”
Scotty Davis is the vice president of All Foreign Auto Parts in Fredericksburg
Virginia. He says it costs him $1800 in labor to take apart a car.
“It’s going to cost me money to do this. It’s one of these things. I have to bring the
car in. I have to get rid of the tires. I have to get rid of all the fluids, the freon,
process it – just to crush the vehicle.”
Davis specializes in newer foreign vehicles. Parts from a clunker won’t help stock
his shelves. But he feels like he has to take the cars to stay in the good graces of
the auto dealers he sells parts to.
“And I’ll be very honest with you. A couple of them I do a lot of business with, I said,
‘I will take your cars.’ And they said, ‘what are you going to do with them?’ I’m going
to crush ‘em. I mean they’re not of any value.”
(sound of a shredder yard)
Once all the usable parts are removed, and the toxic chemicals cleaned out, most
cars will end up at a scrap yard like United Iron and Metal in Baltimore.
“Right now you can see the tail end of a car coming on the conveyor belt down into
the shredder.”
“A tremendous amount of friction is going on as these hammers are pulverizing that
car into small pieces.”
Bruce Savage is with the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries – a trade group. It
only takes 15 seconds, and when the shredder is done with a car, it isn’t even
recognizable.
“That big pile over there is the end result. It’s just a big pile of metal pieces.”
Savage says the metal is then sold. Whether scrap recyclers will cash in on Cash
for Clunkers all depends on the commodities prices for metal in the coming months.
“What was an old car can become a new car or can become a dishwasher or siding
for a home. It depends on the materials. But everything is being reused,
reprocessed and renewed.”
So maybe a 1989 suburban can be reborn as a 2010 Ford Focus Hybrid.
‘Cash for clunkers’ became popular before all the rules were final. For the past few weeks there’s been a growing backlog of orders at dealerships.
(Photo by Samara Freemark)
Today is the first official day of the cash for clunkers program. The government program offers you up to $4500 to trade in your gas guzzling car for a more fuel efficient new car. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Today is the first official day of the cash for clunkers program. The government program offers you up to $4500 to trade in your gas guzzling car for a more fuel efficient new car. Lester Graham reports:
The goal is to clean up the environment and give sagging new car sales a boost.
‘Cash for clunkers’ became popular before all the rules were final. For the past few weeks there’s been a growing backlog of orders at dealerships.
At Varsity Ford in Ann Arbor, Michigan, people have been seeing if their clunkers qualify, and picking out a new car that they’ll finally be able to drive off the lot today.
Matt Stanford sells cars there. He says as far as he’s concerned, ‘cash for clunkers’ is already a success.
“We’re going to sell new cars. We’re going to get cars that don’t really need to be on the road off the road.”
The National Autobmobile Dealers Association says some dealerships have been holding off until they learned more about the rules of ‘cash for clunkers’ which were just cleared up last Friday.
The clunkers will be scrapped. The cash ends when the one-billion dollars in government money runs out.
It is hoped that the "Cash for Clunkers" bill will stimulate fledgling car sales (Photo by Samara Freemark)
The so-called “Cash for Clunkers” bill has passed the US House. Automakers say it could help boost sluggish sales if it passes the Senate and gets signed into law. But as Rebecca Williams reports some people think the bill isn’t very green:
Transcript
The so-called “Cash for Clunkers” bill has passed the US House. Automakers say it could help boost sluggish sales if it passes the Senate and gets signed into law. But as Rebecca Williams reports some people think the bill isn’t very green:
If you have a car or truck that gets 18 miles per gallon or less, under this bill, you’d get to trade it in for a more fuel efficient car or truck. The old car would get scrapped.
You’d get a voucher for several thousand dollars. Old gas guzzlers would get taken off the road.
But Ann Mesnikoff points out: in the House bill you could trade in an old SUV that gets, say, 14 miles per gallon… for a new SUV that gets just two miles per gallon more.
She directs Sierra Club’s Green Transportation Campaign.
“The key things to change in the cash for clunkers program are to ensure that taxpayer dollars are going to buy vehicles that have at least better than average fuel economy. Not those that can’t even meet today’s fuel economy standards.”
Congress is also going to have to figure out how to pay for the bill. It’s expected to cost about 4 billion dollars.
In order to qualify an old vehicle must get less than 18 miles per gallon.
(Photo source: IFCAR at Wikimedia Commons)
After a meeting with the White House, Members of Congress appear to be close to a deal
on a so-called “cash for clunkers” program. But Tamara Keith reports critics say the
compromise members have come up with won’t do much for the environment:
Transcript
After a meeting with the White House, Members of Congress appear to be close to a deal
on a so-called “cash for clunkers” program. But Tamara Keith reports critics say the
compromise members have come up with won’t do much for the environment:
The “cash for clunkers” program has wide support as good for the environment; good for
the ailing auto industry.
Car owners would get a voucher towards a new fuel efficient car when they scrap their
old gas guzzler. In order to qualify an old vehicle must get less than 18 miles per gallon.
But a new car that does just 4 miles per gallon better earns a $3,500 reward. A
10 MPG improvement brings $4,500.
Critics say many of the new replacement vehicles would fall well short of the
government’s average fuel economy standards.
Congressman John Dingell from Michigan says the critics are missing the point: the new
cars will be more fuel efficient than the ones that are getting junked.
“What they aught to ask is, ‘what is this going to mean in terms of increased fuel
efficiency and reduced CO2 emissions.’ The result will be substantial.”
Of course the deal isn’t really done until it is approved by Congress. If it passes, the
President is expected to sign it.
The 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid. (Photo courtesy of Ford)
