Automotive salvage and environmental safety

Environment awareness has increased around the world together with the necessity for better regulations that will allow automotive salvage become a safe environmental occupation. Under law enforcement, automakers should take care of their products from cradle to grave. Carmakers are subjects to great international pressure and urging that all dismantled car pieces, wrecks and carcasses should no longer pile up in waste metal yards, but be reused or recycled.

Is it just metal piling up in salvage yards, which has brought automotive salvage into the spot light? Only partially; as there remains the risk of chemical pollution and infestation due to all the vehicle fluids that pollute the soil, should there be any leakage. Those company owners that deal in car dismantling should follow some general basic environmental security rules when fragmenting cars to pieces.

The best way to minimize spill-over during automotive salvage operations is by evacuating fluids before dismantling and depositing these fluids to safe tanks or containers. Fluids should be immediately removed from all the constituents of the vehicle. If this were not possible, check for leaks, and in case you find any, isolate them and reduce the risk of contamination.

The fluids that result from dismantling automotive salvage should be kept in safe containers or tanks. These should be labeled and inspected on a regular basis in order to prevent alterations or leaks. In case they are deposited outside the salvage yard, they must be equipped with a double protection system from the external environment.

One great advantage that automotive salvage has is that it makes possible the reduction of the production price per component in big vehicle companies that can invest in recycling items or reconditioning them for reuse. Some automakers are also talking about increasing the number of recycling points, where automotive salvage might become the starting point for alternative building materials.

The question that has brought much heated debate is: "To whose expense?" Who pays for automotive salvage that is for dismantling, for reusing, for recycling? The answer to this may be the answer to a whole bunch of environment issues that originate in careless automotive salvage in junkyards.

Managing the automotive salvage yards would dramatically reduce the amount of scrap that fills the land. There are thousands of independent automotive salvage yards owners who need a efficient recycling system as they see the pile growing on their property, as not all of it can be sold or re-used without reconditioning.