Ford Shows Off Recyclable Car

Opspin writes "MBDC (who wrote the book Cradle to Cradle) write in their January Newsletter about a Ford Concept Car that includes Bluetooth technology as well as Cradle-to-Cradle design strategies. Read the MBDC press release, and the Ford Motor Company press release."

Comments

Germany already has laws for Auto Recycling

[StCredZero]

They are quite progressive about this subject. Here is a research paper on the German law.

An excellent expansion of . . .

[privacyt]

. . . an already-ongoing policy. Ford's "Model T of the 21st century" is evolutionary, not revolutionary. So while I salute Ford, don't take the corporate press releases at complete face value. :)

For decades the automobile has been the most recycled consumer product. First a discarded automobile is stripped of its vauable parts. Ever attend a 'all-you-can-carry' day at an automotive salvage yard? A huge crowd of people disassembling autos for the parts they need. Doors, hoods, dashboards, engines, alternators, seats, anything....

Also note, that the majority of stolen cars are stolen for their parts.

After striping, depending on the car and its arrival condition it can be anything from a stripped shell to pretty much intact. At this point the car is crushed.

The crushed car is then put through a shredder, then through various processes the metals are separated and depending how advanced the facility, the plastics and other materials.

BTW, under consideration in europe for auto recycling has beena dismantling approach. Where the automaker takes the car back and actually diassembles it, rather than using a crusher and shreadder.

Even if one is displeased with the actual amount of automotive recycling, the fact remains, it is higher than other consumer products.

Re:Just what we need

[dhovis]

I believe that 80% (by weight) of cars are recycled. There is too much valuble material that is very easy to recover. Auto recycling is one of the better success stories for the concept of recycling. Some of the resistance of using composite body panels (a la Saturn), is that those body panels are not as easily recycled as steel (both at the manufacturing end, and the post-consumer level).

For that matter, you may also not realize that your car is largely made from recycled materials too. I toured Ford's casting plant in Cleveland a few years ago, and they had a five story high pile of scrap metal that they melt down to make engine blocks. They just melt some of it down, check the chemistry, adjust the chemistry, and cast the blocks. If they needed to lower the carbon content, they would throw in some old railroad rails (which are steel and lower in carbon).

By the way, I'm personally of the opinion that nobody should be driving a car >10 years old. The improvements in emisssions technology and safety have been dramatic, and your old car can be recycled and turned into new ones.

Re:Aren't all Ford cars disposable???

[tomhudson]

Quote from gm

DETROIT - General Motors Corp. dealers sold 309,263 new cars and trucks in November in the United States, down 18 percent versus November 2001. GM's overall truck sales (171,862) were down 26 percent; car sales (137,401) were down 6 percent.

So they brought in all sorts of incentives (0.9 percent financing, rebates, etc) to pump up their year-to-year sales figures.

Experience shows that it takes about 5 years for the marketplace to "correct" from abberations introduced by such marketing schemes.

Just look at their financials (quarter ending september 30th 2002) Quote from yahoo financials

Gross profit of almost $13 billion, and a loss of almost a billion bucks *cough*after expenses*.cough*

It wasn't a sustainable business model in the '70s, it didn't work for the dot-bombs in the '90s, and we're going to see SUV sales go through the floor when SUVs are required to meet the same standards (safety, fuel economy, etc) as other passenger vehicles.

So who's going to benefit? Not the big three, who can't see past the latest quarter. My money is on Toyota.