What Did They Use to Make the Cash for Clunker Cars Never Work Again?

That Cash for Clunkers Program Was Not an Environmental Success Story
In 2009, the Car Allowance Rebates System (CARS), fondly known equally the Cash for Clunkers program, was put into effect to take older, less efficient vehicles off the road and supervene upon them with vehicles that go better gas mileage and release fewer tailpipe emissions. The program was mainly designed to provide a long-term economic heave to U.Southward car companies. Only what was really accomplished by the program? Unfortunately, CARS didn't business relationship for the total lifecycle of the scrapped vehicles, or the environmental cost of manufacturing the new vehicles that were sold. When the incentive was offered, automakers sold nearly 690,000 vehicles in cities with lots of used cars, simply to see sales plummet again once the program expired.

According to the Automotive Recyclers Association (ARA), nigh 100% of a vehicle can be recycled. Even the fluids can be reused, according to the ARA. Transmission and brake fluids, anti-freeze, oil, gasoline, diesel and Freon from air conditioners are harvested at scrap yards for utilise in other vehicles. Still, still-functioning engines are the virtually valuable office of a scrapped machine. The engine itself takes the most corporeality of energy and resources to manufacture, so machine companies reap both an ecology and cost do good from being able to recycle engine parts.

Many of the cars that were traded in during Cash for Clunkers were perfectly functioning cars in practiced status, and excellent candidates to accept their engines and other parts recycled. With the engine destroyed, many clunkers bypassed the recycling companies and went directly to junkyards to be crushed and shredded. The ARA issued a written report when the CARS programme was announced saying that a much more efficient program would have been to encourage recycled parts usage. The National Highway Traffic Safe Administration explained at the time that the engines must be destroyed to forbid the vehicles from beingness resold and taking the road again. For any dealer that did not follow that constabulary, in that location was a hefty $fifteen,000 fine per infraction against them.

CARS claims to have had a positive environmental touch on by taking these old vehicles off the road, yet information technology required destroying the traded-in vehicle's drive train and engine. The engines were destroyed with a sodium silicate solution, also known as liquid glass. The silicate causes the engine'due south parts to freeze and ensures it never runs once again. Once the engine was destroyed, the car dealer had two options. For newer models, dealers were more likely to sell them to a total-service professional parts dealer, where the vehicle would be instantly stripped of the most commonly reused parts, aside from the unsalvageable engine. For older models, they were likely sent to a cocky-service parts dealer, where individuals could pick a needed piece at random. Many of the clunkers ended up at auctions where parts dealers bid on them. Past the time all reusable parts are salvaged, the material left is the car'southward frame. CARS mandated that the clunkers be crushed or shredded inside 180 days, regardless of whether all the usable parts were salvaged or not. In contrast, a not-clunker vehicle could stay at a professional parts dealer for upwardly to 36 months.

Cars that are shredded are turned into small-scale, palm-sized pieces of metal, which is so sold to manufacturers every bit raw material. The shredded textile can exist turned back into motorcar parts, or heavy mechanism, steel plates, railroad tracks among other products. For each ton of metallic recovered by a shredding facility, roughly 500 pounds of shredder residue are produced, significant most 3 to 4.5 million tons of shredder residue is sent to landfills every year. This shredder residue typically consists of a mix of materials including polyurethane foams, polymers, metal oxides, glass and dirt. A partnership between the American Chemical science Council, Argonne National Laboratory and USCAR has been working on a way of extracting more of this textile, specifically the plastic. Argonne estimates that recycling only the plastic and metal would represent 24 meg barrels of oil saved each year. Unfortunately, that did not happen with the 690,000 vehicles scrapped during the Cash for Clunkers program.

The Section of Transportation reported that Cash for Clunkers was an environmental success. The clunkers averaged 15.8 mpg, compared with the 25.four mph for new vehicles existence purchased, for an average fuel-economic system increment of 61%. In general, drivers traded in inefficient SUVs and trucks for more than efficient rider cars. Notwithstanding, it's quite easy to negate this small departure in gas mileage purely by the fact that people will be more likely to bulldoze a vehicle that takes less money to make full with gas. It's an efficiency paradox: as we get more than efficient at using free energy, the overall price of free energy goes downward, only nosotros answer by using more than of it. Auto emissions of carbon dioxide are direct proportional to gasoline consumed. With only 690,000 fuel-efficient vehicles purchased and over 250 1000000 cars registered in the U.South., that is a negligible difference in overall greenhouse gas emissions.

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Source: https://emagazine.com/the-cash-for-clunkers-conundrum/