As you are already well aware many of the familiar items in our daily lives, such as plastic bottles, food trays, or aluminum cans, can be recycled. The recycling rate of steel cans is as high as 90%, aluminum cans use 97% less energy when recycled, and most of the cardboard boxes from online purchases are recycled back into cardboard boxes.

The examples above are easy for us to imagine, because the recycled products have the same form as they had before becoming trash. But what happens to more complex items when they become trash? For example, a car is made of many parts, and those parts are also made of various materials such as iron, aluminum, rubber, and plastic. Can they all be recycled?

Exploring what we can do with cars destined for the junkyard will provide some great hints about we can reconsider recycling. So let's take a look at automobile recycling in a little more depth.

In Japan, a car that is no longer needed will be picked up by the dealer. This is made possible because the recycling fee has already been paid when the vehicle was originally purchased.

Automobiles picked up by dealers are transported to dismantling plants, where they are disassembled into pieces such as the body, tires, aluminum wheels, plastic bumpers, and glass. Steel bodies are also used as raw materials for recycled car bodies, or as raw materials for other uses such as steel frames and reinforcing bars. Tires are pulverized and used as fuel and road paving materials. Aluminum wheels are melted and used as a raw material for aluminum products. Plastics such as bumpers are used again as raw materials for automobile parts, and some are used as fuel. Glass is also finely crushed to become raw material for glass. In addition, modern automobiles contain a lot of electrical wiring, and much of this wiring is made of copper. Copper is melted down to make new copper wiring or used as as material for other copper products. In this way, almost 100% of the disused automobiles are recovered and 95% of the vehicle can be recycled.

episode 5
All Trash Can Be Recycled