Scrap metal recycling is an incredibly important industry and one that helps to protect the environment while saving energy compared to traditional manufacturing processes. With over 1 million cars being recycled in the UK every year, scrapping cars is an effective and environmentally friendly way to reuse natural materials and put these back into other manufacturing processes. With 98% of a car able to be recycled the end of the life of your car is just the start of its journey into being reused.
Energy savings
Recycling metals is much more energy efficient than using raw materials to create metal from natural resources. Because recycled metals have been refined and processed the recycling process is much cleaner and less energy-intensive. This equates to some pretty big energy savings that include 92% for aluminium, 90% for copper and 56% for steel.
Reduction in landfill
By recycling scrap cars there is a reduced need for solid waste to be sent to landfill. Removing scrap cars from landfills also helps reduce the amount of toxic chemicals that enter the air and water from electronic waste and hazardous liquids. These hazardous materials include battery acid, oil, anti-freeze, refrigerants and coolant.
Precious resources
There are only a finite amount of natural resources on the planet and mining these often leads to physical destruction of our landscape and destroying the natural habitat of wildlife. Mining takes a lot of energy and resources to get the raw materials needed to make usable materials. As well as depleting our natural resources mining causes erosion and pollution including toxic wastewater.
Greenhouse gases
As one of the largest threats to the environment, we need to do everything that we can to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that we produce. Recycling scrap metal offers a way for us to do this and help protect our environment while still manufacturing new products from metal.
The EU has estimated that recycling metals helps to reduce CO2 emissions by over 200 million tonnes a year. This is a huge reduction and is just one more reason why you should be looking to recycle your scrap car responsibly with a scrap dealer such as Cars 2 Cash.