The automobile business in India is a major success. Following de-licensing in the early 1990s, the rise in automobile and two-wheeler manufacturing and export has been remarkable.

While encouraging, India’s growing industrial production comes at a cost to society in the form of increased energy consumption and hazardous pollutants and greenhouse gases. Efficient recycling of manufactured items saves energy, decreases emissions, conserves resources, protects valuable foreign exchange, and offers numerous job opportunities.

Vehicle manufacturing has over tenfold increased, while the population on the road has more than quintupled. Annual vehicle production is expected to exceed six million in the next ten years, while two-wheeler output will more than quadruple to thirty million. Commercial vehicles and several other categories will see comparable increases in numbers.

In the Indian scenario, end-of-life recycling of automobiles and motorbikes, in particular, provides a significant challenge as well as a significant potential.

Automobile recycling conserves energy, decreases pollutants, conserves foreign exchange, and generates employment.

As newer cars enter the market, older vehicles that have reached the end – of – life must be scrapped.

Why Automobiles?

With all these public service ads and school programmes touting the benefits of recycling, the idea of keeping items out of landfills is firmly entrenched in the minds of people. And the message is spreading beyond Coke cans and peanut butter jars to larger-impact goods.

According to research, 86 per cent of a vehicle’s material content is recycled, reused, or utilised for energy recovery. Given the sheer size of a vehicle compared to other recyclable items, recycling your automobile is an excellent method to promote sustainability.

There are several reasons why vehicle recycling is beneficial to both the environment and the economy. It is no secret that the world’s resources are being depleted at an unsustainable and worrisome rate. According to Global Citizen, the globe would require 1.75 earth to keep up with our current rate of natural resource use.

Another significant advantage of vehicle recycling is the utilisation of scrap metal rather than mining for new fossil fuels. According to the research, every tonne of steel produced from scrap saves 1,400 pounds of coal, 2,500 pounds of iron ore, and 120 pounds of limestone extraction.

Automobile Recycling has many benefits

• Automobiles are among the most recyclable of constructed items, with recovery rates of up to 90%.
• High-grade steel accounts for around 65% of the weight of a conventional saloon automobile. Another 7% to 8% is accounted for by aluminium.
• Other valuable materials that can be recovered include copper, noble metals in catalytic converters, and so on.
• Plastic and rubber from automobiles can be recycled.
• Recycling a standard saloon vehicle may help save 2500 kilogrammes of iron ore, 1400 kilogrammes of coal, 125 tonnes of limestone, 1000 kilos of CO2, and more than 1 megawatt of electricity.
• The equivalent improvements for a typical motorcycle are around one-eighth those of a car. The majority of the savings come from melting scrap rather than the chemical process of smelting ores.
• Compared to manufacturing virgin metal from bauxite, recycling one kilogramme of aluminium saves 14 kilowatts of electrical energy.
• India can efficiently recover two million tonnes of steel, 180,000 tons of aluminium, 75,000 tons of rubber and plastic, and other commodities through effective recycling.
• There will be savings in energy resources as well as a considerable decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. These numbers are expected to rise by 10% every year in the following years.