Is it true that America doesn't recycle its cars? If so, why doesn't it?

Question

A Person who has stayed in America told me that there the cars are simply flattened & piled up one on top of the other in large Scrap Yards. If so, then where they get their more iron ore from to make new cars?

Answer 1

here in america we do in fact recycle our automobiles. car that have reached the end of their useful life are generally sold off to salvage yards, where they are picked over as much as possible for rebuildable parts, or for parts that are in good enough condition to be reused. what is left is crushed and sold off as scrape metal that is recycled. the tires are ground up, the metal removed, and the rest added to asphalt mixed for repaving roads. the plastic is ground up and reused, as is the wiring.

Answer 2

Scrap vehicle prices have risen greatly in the last few years to around $200 a ton where I live.   Rusting hunks in peoples yards are dissappearing as they are recycled and very cheap older vehicles are being bought just to be scraped.   My 1992 trucks blue book value is only $500 now; its scrap value is almost that much.

Answer 3

A majority of the vehicle is recycled.  For current auto salvage scrap recycling prices try http://www.scrapmetalpricesandauctions.c...

Answer 4

Since we don't have cheap labor here in America, it is a lot cheaper to just flatten a car for transport (about 20 flattened cars can be put on a flatbed truck) to a steel mill to be recycled than to pay people to take them apart piece by piece.

Answer 5

Cars may or may not be recycled. Often the are sold to junk yards & used for recovering used parts. Some are crushed & then sold as scrap metal, which is recycled into new steel.  But some cars just sit & rust. They same way they are treated in the rest of the world.

Answer 6

The flattened cars eventualy get sold to steel mills.