Exploring the Impact of Recycling Practices in the Automobile Industry

This report delves into the significant impact of recycling practices within the automobile industry. It begins by highlighting the environmental challenges posed by rapid industrial development and population growth, particularly in developing nations, emphasizing the issue of waste disposal. The report underscores the importance of recycling in managing automobile waste, including materials like solvents, batteries, metals, glass, and plastics. It provides an overview of the composition of vehicles, detailing the shift towards lighter and more fuel-efficient materials like aluminum and engineered plastics. The report then examines various waste management strategies, focusing on recycling and reusing practices to minimize waste. It addresses the challenges in managing plastic, glass, and metal wastes, offering insights into current recycling methods and technologies. The research methodology employed is qualitative, using a case study approach to explore the impact of recycling, with data collected from secondary sources and analyzed using computer software. The report concludes by comparing the findings with existing literature to draw conclusions regarding the correlation between recycling and its impact on the automobile industry.

IMPACT OF RECYCLING IN THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY
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INTRODUCTION
Rapid development alongside growth in the human population in the developing nations for the
last two decades has resulted in a legacy of vast spread environmental pollutions. The disposal of
the various industrial solid wastes inclusive of an advance of hazardous pollutants has turned out
to be a single environmental issue mostly for the developing nations.
The automobile is one of the mainly consumed materials globally. The world has undergone
numerous changes in almost all the aspects with having a vehicle becoming a very popular thing
of the present. An increase in the number as well as production of vehicles has turned out to be
the main controller of the global automobile market (Davidson, Binks and Gediga, 2016, p. 125).
The production of automobiles leads to production of water materials which are recycle by
numerous manufacturers as it is in the resolution of the shortage of supply during the process of
manufacturing.
Management of automobile wastes involve reusing and recycling waste materials including
solvents, batteries, metal, glass as well as plastics. Recycling of such materials aids in address of
the concerns of the environment and enabling them to address challenge of depletion of
resources (Gu et al., 2017, p.268). At the moment, about 75% of the cumulative vehicle weight
undergoes recycling. The end-of-life of vehicles attempts to push the process of recycling even
farther through fixing the recyclability percentage at 85% while recovery at 95%. The left 25%
get to the landfill and are termed as Auto Shredder Residue. Auto Shredder Residue is mainly
made up of fluff and foams, rubbers, metals as well as plastics in various compositions an at the
moment there does not exist a cost effective technology for recycling for foam and plastics.

Most of the modern automotive experts are pushing for numerous procedures to attain better
performance in the recycling of end life of vehicles that is of utmost significance in the recovery
of valuable resources as well as materials from end of life of vehicles (Hao et al., 2017).
LITERATURE REVIEW
Composition of Vehicles
The ordinary vehicle is made up of numerous materials including rubber tyres, steel body frame,
lead batteries, copper wires, glass windows alongside traces of metals I including magnesium,
cobalt, zinc, tin as well as platinum. There has been a significant change in the composition of
vehicles in the recent years as has been witnessed with the significant decline in the
concentration of ferrous metals as a result of adoption of lighter as well as more fuel efficient
materials for the manufacture including aluminium and engineered plastic (Karurkar,
Unnikrishnan and Panda, 2018, p.458).
The energy required in generation of metals tends to be quite high in comparison to the one used
in the manufacture of plastics. There has been a significant rise in the used in production of
vehicles due to their feature of being resistant to corrosion besides being lightweight and
cheaper. The most fundamental aspect of using plastics in the production of vehicles is its cost
efficiency on energy as well as fuel sources (Luthra, Garg and Haleem, 2016, p.591). Metals
including aluminium, steel and metal alloys were the major raw materials for vehicle production
in the past until they were was need to overcome the production of carbon dioxide through the
reduction of the weight of the vehicles with the aim of lowering the fuel consumption amount
that some of the steel were eliminated and substituted using lightweight aluminium.

Waste Management
Numerous initiates in numerous countries have been suggested and are adopted in the
management of solid waste globally. Strategies were initiated and proffered by experts for
reduction of the volume of generation of wastes. Among the major ways that are at the moment
used in the management of wastes in general terms include recovering, reduction, recycling,
reusing, prevention, incineration as well as landfills among others (Mathur, Valecha and Khanna,
2018, p.368).
Recycling and reusing has interchangeably been used when discussions are made regarding
management of wastes. Recycling of waste may aid in the elimination hence minimization of
wastes. Fabrication of machines may use a strategy of minimizing wastes from the used of
disposed metals from the metal scrap markets as well as the industries. From the fabricated
components, it is evident that such materials have become feed stocks. The challenge of wastes
produced by automobiles has not attracted attention despite the tremendous increase in the
number of vehicles over the last few years.
There has not been set in place formal regulations aimed at regulation and controlling the
disposal as well as recyclability of end of life vehicles and still there is not in place adequate and
proper infrastructure to be used for the collection, processing, dismantling and shredding of auto
scrap (Nallusamy et al., 2016, p.148). It is projected that to the tune of 15 million tons of steel
scrap may be recovered by the year 2020 should proper recycling systems and procedures be set
in place. Still, by having proper recycling systems and procedures be set in place, 180000 tons of
aluminium as well as 75000 tons of every recoverable rubber and plastic may be recovered.
What is left may be approximately 25000 tons that is to be disposed which is increasing at 10 per
cent every year.

Management of Plastic wastes
Plastics tend to be cheaper, durable and lightweight materials which may easily be molded into
various products that may be used in an avalanche of applications. As a result the production of
plastics as well as the percentage of plastics that are used in vehicles has significantly shot over
the last few years
The selection of the various parts may be done manually. The initial step towards improvement
of plastic wastes in automobiles is regulating the volume of imported parts into a country and
rather uses old parts for end of life vehicles (Qiao et al., 2018, p. 359). One of the most
significant actions that are used at the moment in reduction of the impacts of plastics is
recycling. Recycling offers the opportunity of reducing use of oil, emissions of carbon dioxide as
well as the amount of wastes that need to be deposed.
Management of Glass Waste
Glass is one of the most high-tech materials that are needed for comfort, sustainability, security
as well as safety of the modern life. The average glass content is a vehicle is about 3% by mass.
Motor vehicles have two main safety glass types: laminated and toughened with the typical
glazing part being composed of glass alongside functional materials including plastic inter-layers
in ceramic inks, laminated safety glass among others. The main methods used in recycling of end
of life vehicle glass include dismantling, shredding and cullet processing.
In dismantling, the glass has to be extracted from the vehicle and sorted by type based on the
suggested end use (Qiao et al., 2019, p.351). Cullet processing involves selection from the
various ranges of waste glass which is available and considering factors including contamination
level, financial factors. Shredding involves crushing the entire vehicles and then shredding it into
numerous pieces which are then sorted into product streams.

Management of Metal Wastes
Metals are specifically metal wastes which come from solid industrial wastes, automobile scraps,
construction wastes among other sources. The metallic parts make up more than 70% of the
cumulative components found in a vehicle in which aluminium and steel take the lead in being
the most dominant materials that are used for structural applications (Rahimpour et al., 2019,
p.288). After the utilization phase, the vehicle is rendered waste just like any other products and
more than 90% of the end of life of vehicle is gathered and treated as imposed by recent
regulation.
Various stages are followed in the various end-of-life treatment facilities including pretreatment,
dismantling, shredding as well as treatment of shredder residues.
The components of the vehicles that are composed of toxic as well as dangerous substances are
eliminated in the pretreatment stage. Such components include the operating fluids, oil filters,
battery as well as those components that contain mercury. Dismantling is the next step and
involves dissemblage of the vehicle to its main components ad well as the individual components
which may be recycled or reused. Parts bearing economic value including the engine among
other components of body may be eliminated directly (Villanueva et al., 2018, p. 348).
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research approach
Qualitative data collection is the research approach used in this study. This kind of qualitative
method is in the form of structured texts insinuating the articles, reports, books as well as papers.
The qualitative method is adopted through carrying out review of document otherwise literature
review. Qualitative data including some ideas, suggestions, findings as well as opinions are
gathered from the various literatures.

Research Design
To attain the objectives of this research, the qualitative design approach that will be used is case
study. Case studies will be used in the exploration and explanation of the different phenomena
which for this study would be how recycling has impacted or changed the automobile industry
(Villanueva et al., 2018, p. 341). As one of the forms of research design, case studies provide
claims to recommendations of vast and deep information that is not often availed by the other
different methods. With numerous variables, case studies could be identified as a sophisticated
set of conditions which generate a specific demonstration hence tends to be a highly
multipurpose method of research.
Data collection
Collection of data will be mainly conducted at the secondary level where information on effects
of recycling on automobile industry is derived from the different secondary information sources.
The information extracted is used as firsthand information and hence being used as the point of
references in circumstance of emergency of contradictory information.
Data Analysis
The collected data will be analyzed using various techniques of data analysis that would see
sense made out of the collected data. Computers and associated computer softwares will be used
to hasten the process of data analysis as well as enhance the accuracy of the analysis in its
entirety (Villanueva et al., 2018, p. 293). The findings from the analysis will be compared
against the hypothesis and the theoretical information on the same subject and thereafter a
conclusion drawn as whether there is correlation or not and hence consistency with the available
information.

References
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