To better explain the subject, I will split it in two parts. In this article we will talk about recycling the metal body and the metal elements and in a later article I wil tackle the subject of recycling plastics, fabrics and electronics found inside even older cars.

Recycling cars has a huge impact on the economy and on the environment, thus why it's so widespread worldwide. In fact, some experts say that around 95% of the retired passenger vehicles are being turned in for recycling every year and just in the USA alone there are 12 million cars that annually go through reprocessing.

Given that most cars nowadays and even older models weigh between 1-2.5 tons, recycling is an excellent way of recovering very large amounts of materials, especially metals, such as steel, aluminum or cast iron.

Why should cars be recycled

The answer is very obvious from the get-go: any recovered resource that can be repurposed is extremely valuable, since it will be easier and more sustainable to remanufacture or to repurpose than to develop it from virgin resources. This also applies to cars, which use a lot of different materials, such as plastics, metals, electronics, fabrics and large, resource-rich batteries for hybrids and EVs.

According to the ACEA (European Automobile Manufacturers' Association), worldwide car sales in 2024 reached 74.6 million units, a 2.5% increase compared to the previous year. Given that many of today's cars are over 1.5 tons, often times reaching 2 tons if we're talking about EVs, the amounts of resources that can be recovered and implemented in the circular economy is huge.

Then, the environmental benefits are clear: retired cars take a very long time to degrade in natural environments and can prove to be a serious hazard. There's a lot of fluids running inside cars these days, all of which are toxic for plants and animals, while degrading metal can prove to be a physical hazard itself.

The economic value and circular economy practices are also to be considered, since cars contain a lot of materials that can easily be recycled to use in the automotive industry or other sectors. This helps us preserve natural resources and enables us to work with second-life materials that are much easier and cheaper to remanufacture, reducing the amount of energy we have to use, as well.

How are cars prepared for recycling

Before recycling a car, specialized companies will first dismantle the different materials (metal, plastic, fabric, rubber etc.), since they can't all be recycled using the same processes. Any remaining fluids, such as coolant, engine oil and fuel, will be removed before the car is recycled, as well, to prevent a fire or any environmental leakage.

These fluids can also be reused or recycled themselves, so actually, most of each car can be implemented in the circular economy, making cars very sustainable by design.

Some private recyclers might buy totaled or heavily damaged cars (such as those that suffered flooding damage) to dismantle them and provide the used market with replacement parts, such as bumpers, headlights or stop lamps, as well as interior pieces. So, even if some parts of a car are not recycled in the literal sense of the word, there's a very high chance that they will be sold to fit in a running model or for restauration purposes, making the retired car market very versatile.

How cars are being recycled

Recyclers will tear apart the entirety of a car, after carefully removing the fluids inside. This means that metal parts will be sorted depending on the type of metal they belong to, steel to steel and aluminum to aluminum, for example. Plastic parts are also sorted separately and so are the electronics and the cables, which can contain gold and copper, while the tires and rubber parts for insulation and the framing of the doors are recycled themselves.

Catalytic converters and particulate filters are also very important parts that are taken apart and dismantled separately. The catalytic converter contains rare metals, such as platinum, palladium and rhodium, each extremely valuable.d

Other metal elements, such as the engine, transmission, gearbox, disk brakes or braking pads, or the suspension, are being melted and molted into new shapes or being reused as they are, if their condition allows for it.

What if your car is heavily rusted? Can that be recycled? Well, it turns out that yes, it actually can. Rust, while definitely one of the signs that a vehicle needs to be retired from the streets, can be removed during the recycling process.

It's not quite as simple as melting the metal to remove rust, as it will reappear when the metal cools down, but by adding certain chemical elements to it, such as carbon, it will separate from the metal part. This doesn't mean that rusted metal is worth the same as non-rusted metal, as it's density will be lower, overall, but it can be recovered, at least partly.

When it comes to the body of the car, which is made entirely out of metal, that is the part that gets compacted in the shape of a cube or a bale, just like hay, like we've seen in movies, but that process takes place only after every other piece of the car has been stripped away. That will eventually be melted and turned into new metal goods.

For EVs and hybrid cars, there are a few other processes involved, such as recovering the electric motors and the traction battery, which themselves are very valuable resources. Electric motors can contain rare-earth magnets, while the large battery can be repurposed as a stationary energy storage device, or recycled to manufacture a new battery or multiple cells.

What can we manufacture from recycled cars

Since they contain a wide number of materials, recycled cars can be turned into all sorts of products, not just new vehicles. The metals, for example, can be used to manufacture new car parts or appliances, such as refrigerators or stoves, or even metal trolleys, such as those used in supermarkets.

From the rubber and tires we can manufacture new tires (although used tires don't have the same properties as brand-new tires and may provide significantly poorer performance on the streets) or insulation materials.

Glass can also be recycled, but automotive-level glass is usually treated against ultraviolet light and might require special recycling processes. Additionally, recyclers must be wary of the thin copper lines on the rear window and the windshield (for newer cars), which are being used for the heating system and need to be removed and recycled separately.

The seats and other fabrics inside can also be recycled after they are cleaned thoroughly, as many carmakers will use recycled textile materials inside their new cars to take on a more sustainable manufacturing approach.

The takeaway is that cars can and actually are being recycled in large numbers. Newer models, despite being more complex and sporting more components than previous generations, are still easily recyclable, as they are manufactured with the circular economy in mind from the beginning. Next time, we'll talk about how car interiors are being recycled and reintroduced in the economy.