Why vehicle recycling is the future?
The US automobile industry is massive. The United States is the fourth largest producer of automobiles in the world, right below Germany and Japan and just above South Korea. Supplying 5.5% of the world automobile supply, of which there are over a billion. The influx of vehicles to the US is added by the fact that the United States imports 179.6 billion USD worth of the world’s vehicle supply, the largest importer by a wide margin. This gives the United States a massive surplus in terms of available vehicles to be sold, increasing total ownership rates. This, combined with increasing costs of car repairs, as newer, modern cars are more complicated and rely heavily on computers, increasing time and effort to fix vehicles, have lead to a rise in new cars being bought.
This phenomenon has caused a rise in car recycling, with nearly 12 million cars recycled each year, 80% of all automobiles in the United States. So it is no wonder why the automobile recycling industry is the 16th largest industry in the US, adding $25 billion to the US GDP of 19.4 trillion, and employs over 100,000 workers. And the United States isn’t even the only country to recycle it’s cars, while the United States recycles 12 million cars, Europe recycles 8 million, and Europe saves about 80% of an original car through recycling, roughly the same as the United States. And surprisingly, the majority of US recycling measures are undertaken by small business, as 75 percent of all automotive companies employ less than 10 people. To add onto the benefits of recycling, North American car recycling programs have saved over 85 million barrels of oil from being used in making new or replacement cars.
Vehicle recycling is a beneficial alternative to complete scrapping, as it provides jobs, assists the environment, and is becoming an attractive new business. As recycling becomes more mainstream, and the demand for new cars starts pushing older cars into the recycling circle, the recycling business is turning into a quickly growing industry, and an excellent investment opportunity into a growing worldwide entrepreneurial field, that has room only to expand.