Ready for the Future: We Need to Reduce the Waste Percentage in Danish Car Scrapping

Salling Autogenbrug is "born green" because their business involves purchasing worn-out or accident-damaged cars, selling the usable spare parts from these cars, and the metals for recycling.

Today, there are approximately 300 kg of waste in an average scrapped car that ends up as "unusable" waste through incineration or landfill. A significant portion of these 300 kg can still consist of usable spare parts that are not economically viable to remove, at least not yet.

Salling Autogenbrug has a vision to reduce the waste percentage in Danish car scrapping. Specifically, they aim to reduce 20 out of the 30% waste that remains in the car when it is sent for scrapping.

At Salling Autogenbrug, they approach traditional scrapping differently. They believe that there is value hidden in the residual materials, even though:

• The extra weight would reduce the scrap price, as scrapped cars are paid by weight.
• It requires resources to disassemble the residual materials and dismantle the car.
• They have to pay for disposing of the residual materials if they don't find a new buyer.

Some of the sorted fractions that Salling Autogenbrug sees as valuable include seatbelts, airbags, foam, various types of plastics, and much more. In the New Waste Material Exchange, you can (soon) find seatbelts and airbags.