FEATURE
Ford Opens Door to Plastics Recycling With the passage of the European "take-back" laws all but inevitable, American automakers are stepping up efforts to recycle U.S. cars. KELLYN S. BETTS
lthough Americans' market-driven efforts because it represents a major impact that automoat auto recycling lag behind European leg- biles have on the environment, said Kevin Mills, diislation, Ford Motor Company's recent en- rector of the Environmental Defense Fund's (EDF's) trance into what was once known as the Pollution Prevention Alliance. junkyard business is likely to bump up Ford has vowed to ratchet up the percentage the percentage of U.S. automobile parts that are of junked automotive materials that get recycled from reused, agree industry watchers. The automaker's 75% to at least 90%. To do so, industry experts agree move is also likely to drive the market for recy- that the company will need to substantially incling plastics, which constitute a significant per- crease the amount of plastics that are recycled. There centage of the volume of scrapped auto parts that is a lot of room for improvement, Mills said. The aucurrently end up in landfills. tomotive industry's current 75% recycling rate is calIn late April, Ford announced plans to expand its culated based on the weight of the recycled matevehicle recycling presence "substantially in the com- rial. Although the steel, copper, and aluminum metals ing months." Ford's in cars are routinely president and chief recovered, 75% of the executive officer, volume of automoJacques Nasser, said tive waste—totaling the move was "di4.5-5 million tons, rectly aligned with annually—ends up in our corporate objeclandfills, according to tive of environmenEDF calculations (i). tal leadership." And A spokesperson for environmental rethe Institute of Scrap sponsibility was a Recycling Industries prominent theme disputed Mills's figvoiced by fledgling ure that only 25% of chair William Clay the volume of autoFord, Jr., at the first motive waste is reannual meeting he cycled but could not presided over in May. point to a credible The fate of the more number. than 10 million veAt present, no one hicles that are taken in the auto industry Disassembling automobiles is an important component of the Vehioff the road each has really good numcle Recycling Partnership's U.S. Field Trial pilot project to recycle plasyear is important tic car parts. (Courtesy Joe Wilssens Photography, Inc.) bers on what per-
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© 1999 American Chemical Society
centage of automobile parts is recovered, reused, or recycled beyond the 75% recovered from shredding (by weight), admitted Richard Paul, project manager of the Vehicle Recycling Partnership (VRP), which is jointiy sponsored by Daimler-Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors (see photo on previous page). But representatives from all of the major automakers in the world are hoping to agree on a standard definition for what percentage of automobiles is recyclable when they next meet in Stockholm in September. Representatives from American, European, Japanese, and Korean automakers will attend the meeting. Shredded fluff No credible figures exist for exactly what percentage of automotive parts is recovered through scavenging that regularly occurs in junkyards to fill orders for used parts, but all scrapped automobiles are eventually transformed into heterogenous, fistsized pieces of metals, rubber, plastics, glass, foam, and carpeting material after they spend 60-90 seconds in a massive shredder. The nonmetallic components in this mixture are known as "fluff" and generally end up in landfills. According to EPA's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, automotive waste constitutes less than 3% of the garbage added to landfills each year. Mills nonetheless contends that the waste "represents a massive resource consumption problem, as well as a waste management challenge because of the volume of material and the potential for the components to be hazardous." The majority of the landfilled fluff is plastic, said Gary Beagell, president of Gary's U-Pull It, a selfservice facility in Binghamton, N.Y., and past ident of the Automotive Recycling Association (ARA). Only a "verv very small fraction" of the average U S car's 240 pounds worth of plastic (the amount is lower in older cars) is currently recycled said Mike Fisher director of technology for the American Plastics Council Ford leads the U S automakers in those efforts although the partnering of Daimler with Chrysler has steDDed UD that coniDany's activities said Gary Davis director of the Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies at the I Jniversitv of Ten npsspp-Knoxvillp Rumpers fascia Hnnrpan 1 trim narts are all nrime candidates for re
More than 10 million cars are taken off the road each year. (Courtesy Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, Inc., Washington, D.C.)
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Fisher said, adding that even engine parts like fan shrouds could be recycled. Davis pointed to Ford s successful program to recover bumper covers as a shining example (2), although he noted that all of the U.S. automakers efforts pale in comparison with those taking place in The Netherlands, where 86% of automotive materials are currently recycled. To fund this effort, however, the Dutch government taxes car buyers and subsidizes the cost of recycling, Paul stresses. Design for disassembly The "take-back" laws expected to go into effect in Europe later this year will prod the entire industry further in planning for how cars are handled at the end of their useful lives, Davis predicted. Even without that incentive, all of the U.S. automakers have made inroads in designing their vehicles for disassembly,
After the crane drops this scrapped car, it will be shredded into fist-sized pieces, and most of its nonmetallic components will end up in a landfill. (Courtesy Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, Inc., Washington, D.C.)
he said. General Motors (GM) has been distributing guidelines about designing for disassembly to all its engineers and suppliers since 1994, said Terry Cullum, manager of GM's Public Policy Center. Those GM guidelines advise against combining incompatible materials in one part, for example, and highlight the value of using easily breakable fasteners. Ford has a similar program in place, and the company regularly conducts "tear downs" of its current vehicles for the various car lines' engineers, said Bill Orr, manager of Ford's worldwide recycling planning. All of the U.S. 3.U tomakers now mark most larger plastic car parts to identify which of the 15 major families of AUGUST 1, 1999 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / NEWS • 3 2 7 A
After automobiles are shredded, the steel, copper, and aluminum are recovered and eventually recycled. (Courtesy Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, Inc., Washington, D.C.)
plastics they contain, Fisher said. But junkyard owners point out that this relatively new marking program does not help them identify the constitution of older cars' plastic parts because the average junked vehicle is nine years old, according to Beagell. Marking also requires scrapyard workers to remove recyclable parts before the automobile's trip to the shredder, he noted, and the associated labor costs drive up the price auto recyclers must obtain for the plastic in order to break even. In addition to the individual auto companies' efforts toward plastics recycling, one of the main missions of the industry's eight-year-old, jointly sponsored VRP is to increase the percentage of recyclable plastics in American cars. But even in this highprofile partnership, efforts to actually recycle plas-
Automobile composition The average car weighs 2500-3000 pounds and is composed mainly of steel. In 1998,92% of the steel recovered from junked automobiles was recycled.
Source: American Automobile Manufacturing Association.
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ticsfromjunked vehicles are in their infancy, said VRP project manager Paul. At present, he is leading a VRP project to find the best way to remove and recycle different thermoplastic parts—only thermoplastics, such as the polypropylene, polyethylene, polycarbonate, nylon, and polyurethane found in cars, can be melted and reused—from junked vehicles in hopes of showing auto dismantlers that plastics recycling can be a profitable business (see box on next page). But only economics can drive the increased recycling of plastics, Paul stressed, noting that the industry still lacks the necesssxy technical processes infrastructure, and markets. "It'll take years," he said. "Nobody is going to Dciv more just because it's a recycled material," he noted. A spokesperson for the VRP said that the organization was "surprised" by Ford's entry into the vehicle recycling business, as were members of the ARA, who provided information for VRP projects with the understanding that the automakers did not intend to compete with them. The fact that automotive plastics are exposed to sunlight and high temperatures makes the challenge of recycling them more difficult than it is for other industries, Paul said. In tests that GM conducts in the Arizona desert, automotive insides can reach as high as 240 °F on a sunny day, Cullum explained. Despite the attendant problems, Ford's 1999 Lincoln Towncar contains 200 pounds of recycled plastic, Orr said, including recycled bumper covers; fender aprons 3x1 d. cin accelerator pedal made from recycled battery cables; and an engine fan and air cleaner formed from recycled automotive carpet resins. The top-of-the-line sedan also contains parts made from other postconsumer and postindustrial recycled plastics which 3X6 turning increasing numbers inside new cars and trucks. The inside of Cadillac roofs have been constructed from recycled soda bottle containers since 1991 Cullum said noting that the 2000 Cadillac DeVille will contain a total of 63 pounds of postindustrial and postconsumer recycled parts To bump up the amount of automotive plastics Ford recycles, the company is investigating the use of a newly developed chemical process for recycling nylon carpet fibers that can be repeated indefinitely without degrading the quality of the nylon, Orr said. Nylon materials mat are recycled using that process will begin appearing in 2000 model Ford cars and trucks, he said. The company is also supporting Purdue University's attempts to develop a device for reading the composition of the plastics in older cars, Orr added, postulating that there could be a trillion individual blends of plastics in different auto part formulations. The VRP is also exploring whether some recycled automotive plastics can "go down the food chain" for use in less demanding applications such as holding together floor mats Paul said Beyond recycling What Ford is attempting to do with its new recycling ventures goes beyond recycling, Davis claimed. He calls what Ford is embracing "remanufacturing," which he defines as refurbishing used parts. "Re-
Plastics recycling processes undergoing pilot tests The main reason why the plastic parts from junked cars usually land in the trash heap is that those parts are difficult and expensive to separate and make pure enough to be useful, according to Richard Paul, project manager for the U.S. automakers' Vehicle Recycling Partnership (VRP). Both the VRP and Argonne National Laboratory currently have pilot projects under way that aim to overcome the hurdles that keep plastics from being recycled. Approximately 60% of the technology required to recycle plastics has been developed at this point, estimates Mike Fisher, director of technology for the American Plastics Council. At this juncture, the most needed technologies are tools for separating different kinds of plastics from shredder waste and methods to deal with paintings and coatings on the plastics, he said. The VRP is taking what might be called a life-cycle approach to plastics recycling with its U.S. Field Trial pilot. The project began in 1998, and organizers tapped people at Gary's U-Pull It, a self-service facility in Binghamton, N.Y., to pull and sort targeted plastic parts from vehicles that ended up there. Next, the plastic parts travel to Boston, where they are cleaned. The final stop is Destiny Plastics of Port Sanilac, Mich., where experts analyze the material to decide how it can best be used, as well as whether it needs to be combined
manufacturing is far better for the environment than recycling," he said, explaining that it saved energy— anywhere from 10 to 70%, depending on the auto part, compared with the energy needed to completely reprocess automotive material when it is recycled—and ancillary materials, in addition to avoiding waste. One improvement Ford may bring to the business is easier access to information about environmental contaminants like the gram of mercury used in all American cars' convenience trunk lighting (3). Mills calls this a "significant" amount of a persistent bioaccumulative toxic, and Buessing of the ARA said that the automotive industry was "not very forthcoming" about the toxic substance's presence in junked vehicles until very recently. Although automakers have committed to reclaiming mercury and phasing out its use, junked cars containing the toxic chemical will be entering scrapyards for the next 10-20 years. Mills stressed that "when substances like [mercury] are in the vehicle, you definitely want to be aware of that in the recovery process." Ford has the wherewithall to make information like that widely available he said "The question is whether thev'd be motivated to do something about it" he said In the long run, involvement of a company like Ford in remanufacturing may cut into the parts resale business that has historically produced many junkyard owners' profits. "My forte is selling auto pails—I don't make money selling scrap," said Mark Buessing, current president of the ARA and owner of American Auto Recycling in Chandler, Ariz. Scrapyard owners have already been squeezed by last year's drop in prices for scrap steel; Buessing said the price that he gets for
with virgin material. Paul expects the VRP to publish its first feasibility report in September. "A big question is, what are these materials like after they've been out in the environment for 10 or 12 years on a vehicle, exposed to heat, cold, and sunlight, and other abuses," Paul said. "Can you reasonably expect to take material off an end-of-life vehicle after it's been out under these conditions for so many years and just grind it up and remelt it and expect it to perform like virgin material? We're an industry that's specification-driven—materials and parts have to 'meet spec,' and if they don't, we don't want them. And they've got to be cost- and weight-competitive," he explained. The Argonne researchers are testing an industrial-grade method for separating plastics in shredded automotive fluff that are of equal density using a process called "froth flotation" that also works for plastic appliance waste. By controlling the chemistry of the froth, the researchers target the surface characteristics of the different plastics. For example, the method can be used to attach small gas bubbles to the surface of one material, reducing its effective density and causing it to float. In addition to effectively separating acrylonitrile-butadienestyrene (ABS) and high-impact polystyrene with the froth flotation method, the Argonne scientists, in conjunction with scientists from the American Plastics Council, were able to successfully use the ABS plastic that they recovered to create automotive headlamp "back cans."
shredded steel plummeted from $70 per ton to $30 per ton. The percentage of automotive steel that is recycled fell from 97.5% in 1997 to 92% in 1998, according to the Steel Recycling Institute. For reasons like these, people in the automobile scrapyard industry are concerned about Ford's entry into die business, Beagell said, noting that the industry has also seen some consolidation in recent months. Buessing stressed that his industry has grown more high-tech in recent years. But the technology that Ford is poised to bring to the business—and the giant automaker has vowed to operate a used parts business in every major metropolitan area— capitalizes on economies of scale unfathomable to what is currently mostiy a local Mom-and-Pop industry. The automaker's entry into the business is likely to drive up the prices of secondhand auto parts, predicted Steve Smith, a salesperson at Bellaire Road Auto Parts in Cleveland, Ohio. "Most of the people in the industry are watching carefully" Beagell concluded "It's going to be a different ball game "
References (1) Environmental Defense Fund. www.edf.org/programs/PPA/ VLC/shredders.html_Hlt452875265 (accessed June 1999). (2) Davis, G. A.; Wilt, C. A. Extended Product Responsibility: A New Principle for Product-Oriented Pollution Prevention, EPA 53-R-97-009; Office of Solid Waste, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, June 1997. (3) Michigan Mercury Pollution Task Force; Mercury Pollution Prevention in Michigan: Summary ofCurrent Efforts and Recommendations for Future Activities; Michigan Department of Environmental Quality: Lansing, MI, April 1996. Kellyn S. Betts is an associate editor ofES&T. AUGUST 1, 1999 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / NEWS • 3 2 9
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