Salling Autogenbrug, together with the recycling company HJ Hansen Recycling and Aarhus University, have teamed up in a pilot project to show that waste from scrapped cars can be reduced from 30 to 10 percent.
More materials from old cars must be recycled or recycled before the car is scrapped, and the iron and metal left in the car must be as clean as possible to increase the value of the scrapped car.
This is the essence of a pilot project that the Skive company Salling Autogenbrug together with the recycling company HJ Hansen Recycling from Odense and Aarhus University, have embarked on. Together, they will demonstrate on 100 tons of car scrap that the waste from scrapped cars can be reduced by 20% from 30 to 10% by removing materials such as seat foam, harnesses, glass, plastic, airbags etc., before the car is sent for scrap.
We have previously told the story of Salling Autogenbrug and their work to become a green company. The company is now completing the circle in the ECSMV project with a green value chain collaboration. The ECSMV project has supported the establishment of the value chain collaboration with DKK 200,000 for consultancy services from Provice ApS.
The project fits in very well with HJ Hansen Recycling’s own goals and visions to reduce the consumption of resources and to reuse and recycle more instead of throwing away, and it is the first of its kind within car scrap.
“We think it is a particularly exciting project, and we are very proud to be able to participate,, says Kurt Søndergaard Jensen, segment manager for car scrapping at HJ Hansen Recycling.
He states that car scrap today contains approximately 30% waste, and the plastic fractions, in particular, can be difficult to separate and set aside for recycling once they have been through a shredder.
“So it’s fantastic if the waste parts are dismantled and recycled before the cars end up in our shredder,” says Kurt Søndergaard Jensen.
HJ Hansen Recycling only really comes into play when Salling Autogenbrug has produced 100 tonnes of car scrap in Skive with 20% less waste. When the Odense company receives the scrap cars from Salling Autogenbrug, it contributes with a test drive through its shredder plant. Then they can start measuring the effect of the lower waste percentage by getting a measurable output on the different fractions, iron, metal and waste.
For Salling Autogenbrug, it is a pat on the back and recognition that such a major player and central actor as HJ Hansen Recycling finds the work of the Skive company interesting.
“If this project is really to make sense, it is not enough with our 100 ton cars. We must have our colleagues with us. So if HJ Hansen Recycling can show in their test run that there is a business in delivering the cars cleaner with less waste, then the other car recycling companies will, all other things being equal, also start extracting the residual materials. And then we begin to deal with large CO2 savings,” says Lise Korsgaard, co-owner of Salling Autogenbrug.
But before the cars can go to the shredder in Odense, they have to be split into atoms, so to speak, and it is, among other things, students from STU Skivefjord who are responsible for that task. The STU students’ work at Salling Autogenbrug has several advantages.
“We could see right from the start that it is not worthwhile to use skilled labor to extract residual materials from the cars. The collaboration with STU Skivefjord has been crucial in terms of breaking the code for the workforce and getting the project started. We hope the collaboration can continue,” says Lise Korsgaard.
For Salling Autogenbrug, it is a great pleasure to collaborate with STU Skivefjord, and it is a collaboration that goes very smoothly. The young people clearly take ownership and are proud to be part of the team. At the same time, they gain experience of being in a workplace, and they get a varied everyday life where they are also allowed to use their hands.
Lise Korsgaard hopes that the young people may be able to continue in flexible work, early retirement or in an ordinary employment at Salling Autogenbrug, once they have completed their 3-year education at STU Skivefjord.
HJ Hansen Recycling is one of the largest recycling companies in the Nordics. Their shredder can chew through 240 cars an hour.
Salling Autogenbrug has just won the “Sustainability Award of the Year” at the Auto Awards 2022.
This article was originally published at ecsmv.dk
