HENDERSON — For 80 years now, mechanics have been pulling parts off junked cars perched on battle-worn lifts at Stadium Auto Parts, cleaning and tagging every intact gearbox, radiator or alternator for a second or third life after resale. Thoroughly accelerated into the modern world of trade, Stadium’s sprawling lot includes an entire shipping bay for wrapping and boxing internet-purchased components.
But some of the hulking engines waiting on tall racks in the main Stadium warehouse have a rare “not for resale” label. These old soldiers must never be put back in a running car, but instead must be disabled and melted down for scrap, as part of a relatively new recycling and retirement program run by a company called Shift.
Old cars at the end of their useful life can either go to those perky children playing air guitar on the “Kars4Kids” commercials, or they could go through Shift, which guarantees the engine’s life is over and handles all the logistics through parts dealers like Stadium.
Shift concerns itself with the old cars that have antiquated, relatively high-polluting engines and emissions systems, and should not have their combustion parts go back out on the road and contribute to ozone and greenhouse gas growth. Some car recycling efforts may tear down a vehicle for parts resale, but refurbish the engine as the most valuable item.
Shift makes arrangements with auto recyclers to fully decommission the engines, while the rest of the vehicle’s parts can be sold and reused.
“When you recycle your vehicle the right way, and this is what Shift promises and delivers, the vehicle is recycled to completion, and it can be one of the largest environmental impacts and decisions you can have when trying to live more sustainably and make those choices in in your lifestyle,” said Chapin Griffith, the Denver director of vehicle retirement for Rhode Island-based Shift. “Our program guarantees that vehicles get recycled a certain way, with the best recyclers, all engines retired.”
The recyclers can still find value from the junked cars by reselling the other noncombustion parts.
Many people who donate cars rather than sell the remaining value as scrap want to make sure the old vehicle isn’t resold overseas and kept running with high emissions, Griffith said. Part of the Shift service is to pick partners in the car recycling business who have committed to best environmental practices in everything from recovering and storing chemicals, to keeping runoff away from stormwater systems, to responsible recycling of batteries.
Donors are still able to take a charitable tax deduction for the remaining value of the car. Shift takes its fee when a car recycler buys the vehicle for the other parts. The certainty guaranteed by Shift is all part of helping create a more sustainable circular economy for used goods that still have value as commodities, said Griffith, who previously worked in remarketing fleet vehicles with Amazon.
Even with his previous working knowledge, Griffith said, he’s still surprised by the economics of car scrapping.
“When recycled correctly, with the recyclers that we work with, up to 90% of the vehicle is recyclable, which is just astonishing, and something I didn’t even know,” he said.
Stadium’s second-generation owner, Norm Wright, is happy to show off every inch of the safety-first parts recovery bays, with rows of junked cars purchased at auction well-hidden from public approbation behind a fence lining the Burlington Ditch. Even the drips of engine oil are accounted for, siphoned into barrels for reclamation or burned in winter in the high-wall heater of the main scrapping bay.
With every vehicle part these days tagged from the assembly plant onward, Stadium’s computer tracking systems can tell Wright and Shift the split-second demand and optimal price for, say, the power window motor on a 2012 Honda Accord.
“If I buy a car, I want to know how long will it take me to recover my initial investment,” Wright said. “Last month, we were at about 52 days.”
Shift seeks recyclers like Stadium, Griffith said, because consumers want to know not just that the old engine is off the road, but that reusing all the other parts will help reduce demand for natural resources and reduce waste to landfills.
“We’re just returning the best environmental outcome for our customers, which is what our customers want,” Griffith said.