Retire Your Ride - We Recycle Responsibly

Cars are the most complex, mass-produced recycled product on the planet. Did you know that 75% of an average car's content by weight can be recycled? This means it is extremely important that vehicles are recycled responsibly.

The Automotive Recyclers of Canada (ARC) and The Government of Canada crafted a mandatory National Code of Practice for automotive recyclers interested in participating in Retire Your Ride. The Code was developed to ensure that recyclers have the most relevant information and tools necessary to prevent hazardous materials contained in end-of-life vehicles from contaminating our water, soil, and air during and after the vehicle recycling process. Although Retire Your Ride has ended, the Code of Practice lives on.

The Code has three goals:

To convey the legal and mandatory requirements before, during, and after the recycling process and promote best management practices within the industry;
To promote pollution prevention and the 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) in the vehicle recovery industry to reduce the ecological impact of the automotive sector; and
To ensure that there is a consistent set of practices that are aligned, as much as possible, with federal, provincial, and municipal laws and regulations, as well as with industry stewardship programs, where applicable.

The modern auto recycling process is a model of environmental responsibility. Each vehicle goes through a methodical process designed to maximize the amount of material that can be reclaimed and minimize the environmental impact. The recycling process happens in three stages:

Stage 1 - Pre-treatment: drainage of operating fluids
Stage 2 - Parts re-use: dismantling of parts and components
Stage 3 - Recycling of materials

1. Pre-treatment
2. Parts Re-Use
3. Recycling Of Materials

Oil, gas and operating fluids pose a significant risk to the environment. Trained technicians carefully drain all the fluids and store them for re-use or recycling. Special equipment and methods are used in order to prevent any groundwater contamination. An average of 40 litres of fluids are removed from each vehicle and are used, re-used or responsibly disposed of.

Take a look at what happens to each of the fluids below:

Oils: Oil is drained from all vehicles, tested and re-used for energy recovery in licenced used oil furnaces to heat their buildings. Any excess is sent to recycling facilities to be re-processed and re-used.
Anti-freeze and washer fluid: Fluids are separated and resold onsite or sent to reputable recycling facilities to be re-processed and re-used.
Refrigerants: The gases from air-conditioning systems are carefully removed by licensed technicians to ensure none of them escape into the atmosphere. The used refrigerant is sold to a licensed buyer to be re-used.
Fuel: Using special equipment, gas tanks are punctured, drained and removed. The fuels are used by the auto recyclers in their own equipment or sold for re-use.
Mercury Switches: There’s enough mercury in one little switch to contaminate a 20-acre lake! Although mercury switches are no longer being installed in new vehicles, there are about 9 tonnes of these switches still in vehicles on the road today. Mercury switches are removed and collected, then sent to the Summerhill Impact’s Switch Out Program for mercury recovery and storage. Switch Out is a national program designed to remove these switches from end-of-life vehicles and prevent the highly toxic heavy metal from being released into the environment.

The vehicle is sent to the auto recycler’s dismantling area, where parts are removed, inspected and readied for resale. Each part is tagged, coded and entered into a computerized inventory system before it is properly stored.

Gas tanks, batteries and tires are also removed and recycled, re-used or disposed of appropriately.

Each vehicle is inspected to determine which parts are appropriate for re-use. The VIN, mileage, make, model and year of the vehicle are recorded in order to provide accurate inventory data.

Take a look at what happens to each of the parts below:

Battery: After testing, batteries that are in good condition are sold to customers for re-use. Others are sent to a licensed recycling facility to be rebuilt.
Tires: Quality tires with lots of tread life are sold for re-use. Others are sent to tire recyclers and processed as tire crumb to make new products or to pave our highways.
Wheels: Wheels are sold for re-use. In some cases, they are reconditioned. Damaged wheels are reclaimed as scrap metal.

The unusable portion of the vehicle is then crushed and sent to be shredded into fist-sized pieces for recovery. Any valuable metals are separated and re-used to make new cars and other consumer products... and the cycle starts again.