The theme for this year will thank the nation for continuing to recycle despite the challenges that Coronavirus has presented, under the banner ‘Together – We Recycle’.
We love talking about recycling, particularly spreading the word about car recycling and donating your car! The theme ‘Together – We Recycle’ is an appropriate one for the team at Charity Car, because we couldn’t help you recycle your cars for charity without the CarTakeBack network of authorised scrap car recycling centres. CarTakeBack is the company that launched Charity Car!
Recycling a car isn’t something that you’re likely to have thought about, until you need to. Making sure your car is recycled in a responsible way is really important. You should ensure that your car is recycled by an authorised scrap car recycling centre, if you don’t, not only could you get fined, but you could also be damaging the environment.
There’s lots that goes in to recycling a car, it’s not just a case of crushing it into a neat cube, there’s certain processes that have to be followed before that part comes.
Scrap cars can only be recycled by sites that are authorised by the environment agencies. There are many processes that go into recycling a car, the main steps include – securely detonating airbags, removing all fluids such as fuel, brake fluid, windscreen washer fluids, which have to be safely removed – ensuring that no chemicals leak into the surrounding environment. Any working parts on the vehicle that are in a good enough condition for reuse are salvaged, to get more life out of them. The car is now at the point when it’s crushed, this is done to make cars easier and more efficient to transport for further recycling.
This recycling process is for a petrol or diesel vehicle, there are more steps that go into safely de-conditioning a hybrid or electric vehicle, as the batteries can be highly dangerous to remove.
The cubed cars are then safely transported to a shredder facility where they are further processed into smaller pieces and separated into metal, glass, plastics and fabrics which can then be recycled for use by various industries – including car manufacturing. At this point 95% of the car has been recycled! The remainder that can’t be recycled becomes top cover for landfill.
When the time comes for you to get rid of your car, you’ll know how much time and effort goes into safely recycling it by all the people involved.
Recycling and the environment has always been at the heart of Charity Car. When we launched almost 10 years ago, environmental charity, The Rainforest Foundation, were the very first to partner with us. They were closely followed by Cool Earth, both of which are still amongst the many charities promoting responsible car recycling and receiving your car donations through Charity Car to this day.
