Auto Fluff Recycling

January 19, 2009 -- Filed under My impact by Andrew Macdonald

I’m not thinking about glossy ads or the advertorial nature of auto reviews here, but rather the increasing volume of glass, plastic, foam, textiles and rubber built into today’s automobile. Thinking about all of this stuff in new cars came out of a conversation over the holiday about the “old days” while we were tinkering with an “old” restored 1975 Volkswagen 914. Most folks don’t remember these cars, so if you need a reminder, here’s a picture of one.

Back to the car stuff. While poking around the 914, someone said something like, “for a really small car it appears to be manufactured with a high percentage of steel. What does it weigh?” (For example, the dash is solid steel.) The car has a very small footprint, and weighs in wet at approximately 2,000 lbs or 908 kg, which means that, like most vehicles of this vintage, it required large quantities of ferrous and non-ferrous metals.

We opened the garage door to look at the “new” cars a few of the guys had parked outside. The contrast from the old to the new was remarkable. What became very obvious was the volume of NON metals used in the manufacture of these modern automobiles. So, when these vehicles come to the end of there useful life, what will happen to all of the glass, plastic, foam, trim, switches and electronics?

When I Googled “automobile shredder” I found this really cool 30-second video of a vehicle being consumed by a massive 4,000 horsepower machine. When I added the word residue to the search I came up with “auto fluff,” a term coined in this article from Autorecycler. Auto fluff now comprises 20-25% of a vehicle’s weight. And due to the complexity of material recyclability, this “waste” is destined to become landfill.

In Canada, we crush (recycle) about 700,000 vehicles each year. The fluff is then processed by screening, grinding or shredding the material. If we know this “shredder residue” represents 25% of vehicle volume, we in Canada are dumping the equivalent of 175,000 vehicles into landfills each year. That’s a lot of blue boxes!

Here’s the problem. In the future, vehicles will become much lighter, in part through the use of more non-ferrous materials. As a result, shredder residue will continue to increase as a waste stream, and will become a serious raw material resource issue for every nation with a personal automobile habit.

Here is the exciting part: our friends in Europe are well on the road to finding a solution for the end-of-life residue challenge. In fact, end-of-life management, sometimes called lifecycle analysis, is scheduled to take effect in 2015.
Volkswagen AG, in partnership with SiCon Corporation, has developed an auto recycling process that has become the industrial standard for Europe.

The process converts more than 95% of automobile shredder residue into recycled, usable products. These products have a market value which supports the business case, while ensuring that certain raw materials (like palladium from catalytic converters) are returned to manufacturers (VW) for reuse, thus creating an effective raw material lifecycle system. The technology, called the “VW-SiCon Process” intelligently combines various tried and tested treatment stages.

If I apply all of this through the eyes of my 10-year-old, the numbers are staggering: we have thrown away 1.7 million vehicles since 1999. I wonder how many we will send to the landfill the year she turns 20. With the Volkswagen AG auto recycling process applied here in Canada, we have the potential to move auto material recovery from 75% to more than 95%, thus preventing 140,000 vehicles from entering landfill sites each year.

Maybe we can find someone at the Automotive Recyclers of Canada association to help us understand the direction of the Canadian industry. I will send a note!

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