Due to high oil prices and the cost of steel, aluminum, and plastics high and continuing to go up, automakers and suppliers have now been using recycled plastics. There is recycled plastics in bumpers, splash guards and under the hood.  Sometimes the savings are just a few cents, and other times the savings is half the price of new plastic. 

The problems with recycled plastic is that sometimes the quality isn’t as good, but if you mix recycled plastics with new material, the quality is just fine.  Bumpers have about 20% recycled plastics in them. 

Ford’s fender liners, which are on the inside of a fender to protect it from debris, are made from recycled automotive battery casings, according to Claudia Duranceau, who is a senior research recycling engineer at Ford.  GM is using recycled water bottles to make the carper and floor mats in the Pontiac G8.  GM also uses recycled nylon for the exterior mirror casings in the GMC Acadia.

The quality and growth in the recycling business has helped automakers to use and continue to grow their uses of recycled material.  It is good to see this happening. Even though the initial intention of the recycling material was probably for the cost efficiency, it’s still good for the environment and will continue to be so as more recycling occurs. 

Source: article in Detroit Free Press 

 

This entry was posted on Monday, October 13th, 2008 at 7:34 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.