Recycling Facts and Stats from Around the World

Recycling Facts and Stats from Around the World

The earth’s natural resources—water, air, oil, natural gas, coal, and minerals—are the foundation of everything we rely on in modern life. These six essential resources, however, are limited. In the past 50 years, men have consumed more resources than at any other time in history, and the demand for raw materials keeps rising, according to a report by the Bureau of International Recycling. Despite the fact that we are using up natural resources much too quickly, billions of tonnes of rubbish are disposed of in landfills each year. With time, the understanding of the usefulness of scrap vehicles for sale is getting popular and that is a step towards a greener approach.

Around the world, 27 million cars are recycled each year

With those kinds of figures, it’s simple to understand why automobiles are the world’s most recycled product. The majority of first-world countries continuously improve their infrastructure and capacity for recycling cars, and in recent months, an increasing number of poorer countries have started to do the same. India made the decision to eliminate millions of outdated vehicles from the roads, which together cause severe pollution, about this time last year. Nearly none of these vehicles fulfil the environmental criteria expected of modern vehicles, and many of them are barely operable. The original producers will be held accountable for recycling them, according to India’s plan. As a vehicle owner, you can have a look at the listed vehicle scrapping companies in India to find out where to make your car registered or find a reliable place to sell off your car.

Recycling saves Millions of tonnes of material

Metal will always make up the largest portion of materials recovered from ELV (end-of-life) vehicles. Even with that knowledge, the numbers still could astound you. Annually, ELV automobiles recycle 14 million tonnes of steel. That is sufficient to construct about 2000 Eiffel Towers, to put it into perspective. Another metal that is widely utilised in the manufacturing of automobiles is zinc, mostly for plating that safeguards the chassis, the fuel systems, and the bonnet. Its main benefit is that it is extremely resistant to corrosive substances like salt, making it beneficial whenever salt is sprayed on highways to fight slick surfaces in freezing weather.

1.5 million of the 2.9 million tonnes of zinc collected from scrap cars each year are turned into new scrap or leftovers

There are even more benefits, including significant energy savings. According to estimates, the steel sector saves enough energy each year to power roughly 18 million households for a year. Meanwhile, processing of recovered zinc requires 76% less energy than that of fresh zinc production. Overall, this implies that everyone on the earth gets to share in the advantages of recycled material while also reducing some of the environmental strain from energy use.

In Europe, each automobile recycles 95% of its weight

You might not be aware of this, but practically the whole body of your car is recyclable, not just the steel or the zinc plating. In fact, it’s estimated that roughly 25% of the new cars produced today are made of scrap metal. In addition to metal, other easily recyclable automotive parts include windscreens, batteries, upholstery, and tires.

Car recycling boosts the world economy by producing thousands of employment

Nowadays, solid waste management processes garbage using a sizable number of automated devices. Contrarily, recycling needs more work because it frequently calls for keen eyes and human discretion (for instance, by manually selecting potentially valuable material from a conveyor belt to sort it for re-use). The Green Alliance looked at the potential for the recycling industry to add 200,000 jobs in the next years, only in Britain.

What needs to happen next?

  • In order for the cycle to continue as efficiently as possible, new product designs must not only incorporate recycled materials but also make disassembly and material separation simpler.
  • In order to ensure that end-of-life products are handled ethically and that the greatest amount of materials are recovered for re-use and recycling, governments must impose stronger recycling standards for industries.
  • Infrastructure for waste management and recycling needs to be supported in growing and developing economies.
  • In wealthy nations, ongoing investment is required to improve recycling technologies and collecting infrastructure.
  • More public education is needed to ensure that residential recycling is efficient. This includes teaching people how to clean and separate recyclables, compost, and use specialised services for complex end-of-life products like mobile phones, which frequently wind up in trash cans.
  • There is still work to be done to recover waste that has already leaked into the environment, such as the recyclable plastic that is present in our oceans.