Total Vehicle Recycling
SOUTHFIELD, MI (August 5, 2007) The Vehicle Recycling Partnership (VRP), an initiative of the United States Council for Automotive Research's (USCAR), is taking a leadership role in optimizing the recycling of all materials in shredder residue, regardless of their sources. USCAR is comprised of researchers from DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp.
Currently, more than 84 percent, by weight of materials, of each end-of-life vehicle (ELV) in the United States is recycled, with 95 percent of all vehicles going through the existing infrastructure. While the U.S. automakers have worked diligently to eliminate substances of concern (SOCs) from general vehicle content, some SOCs can still be found in shredder residue, which contains materials from a combination of automotive and non-automotive sources. These materials come from such non-automotive sources as appliances, building demolition materials and commercial and industrial waste.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says that based on weight of materials, 84 percent of all vehicles, 67 percent of all major appliances, 63 percent of all steel packaging, 50 percent of all paper, 45 percent of all aluminum beer and soft drink cans and 34 percent of all plastic soft drink bottles are now recycled.(Source: EPA)As part of its work, the VRP recently contracted with ECO2 Plastics Inc. - one of several private industry innovators working with the VRP and its partners to develop shredder residue recycling solutions - to evaluate the company’s proprietary polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic “rinse and recycle” technology.
The ECO2 technology removes substances of concern from plastics recovered from “shredder residue” - the material left when ELVs, household appliances and other large items are shredded by a large, grinding hammer-mill, or shredder, as part of the recycling process. The shredder residue plastics are cleaned in an environmentally friendly process, which uses no water and deploys a biodegradable solvent and liquid carbon dioxide (CO2) to remove the substances of concern so that more of the residue can be readily reused.
“We are encouraged by our initial review of the ECO2 process,” said Nakia Simon DaimlerChrysler product development engineer and VRP representative. ECO2’s rinse and recycle process cleans the plastics recovered from shredder residue to a level that meets the regulatory guidelines, allowing them to be reused as recycled plastic content for new automobile manufacturing. “Innovative processes like these can help bring us closer to our goal of more fully recycling all end-of-life vehicles with the added benefit of creating a recycled product for automotive use.”
(Source: USCAR)
