Plastic in your vehicle.

[son of a ..sven]

About 400 lbs. is used in your truck. Plastic use in vehicles has been increasing over the years. It's cheap and can be used in many areas of a vehicle. Plastics in today's cars will still be used in car parts 20, 30 and even 40 years' time despite there being an average of 208 kilos of plastic in a car, currently, a mere 19 per cent of it is recycled. Aside from Auto production, in the US we use:



It clogs streams. It chokes turtles. It gets caught on a bare branch and blows in the breeze. It stews in landfills.

But it is also a climate pollutant. From the extraction of fossil fuels to make polymers to the transport and disposal of the waste, single-use plastics produced 450 million metric tons of planet-warming greenhouse gases in 2021 alone

In total, we use 100 million tons of plastic every year. Some 10 percent of this plastic end up in the oceans. An estimated 300 million plastic bags every year end up in the Atlantic Ocean alone.
Just something to think about...

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[TrailMaster]

Dang. Now I'm feeling guilty that I didn't find a car with a sustainable bamboo interior!

 

[Speed2000]

It's not as bad as the mess all these hybrid and electric car batteries will be once they end up in a land fill and start polluting our ground water. At least plastic can be strained out from the water unlike heavy metals.

 

[Clarkdonbran]

Looks like this is our future

 

[Maverickman74]

For real. Im the sole person responsible for around 500lbs of recycling every month where I work. Its a big uphill battle.

 

[Bob The Builder]

Don't forget all the plastic on windmill blades that go off into the air and soil as the blades deteriorate from UV and the like. An inconvenient truth in this day and age it seems.

I'm also willing to bet, but I have no facts to back it up that the majority of of plastic in automobiles gets recycled through the junkyards, as opposed to all those plastic water bottles.

Sorry, but just not seeing a lot of automotive dashboards and door panels in the rivers when I go fly fishing.

 

[Redline]

Where's Al Gore when you need him

 

[fossil]

It's not as bad as the mess all these hybrid and electric car batteries will be once they end up in a land fill and start polluting our ground water. At least plastic can be strained out from the water unlike heavy metals.

A scary old wives tale.
Those batteries will not be in land fill, it's illegal and they're too valuable full of precious metals not to mention lithium. EV battery recycling is just getting started simply because there hasn't been enough to be profitable until now.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a44022888/electric-car-battery-recycling/

 

[Exranger]

Dang. Now I'm feeling guilty that I didn't find a car with a sustainable bamboo interior!

Yes remember the sisal floor mats?

 

[fossil]

Don't forget all the plastic on windmill blades that go off into the air and soil as the blades deteriorate from UV and the like. An inconvenient truth in this day and age it seems.

I'm also willing to bet, but I have no facts to back it up that the majority of of plastic in automobiles gets recycled through the junkyards, as opposed to all those plastic water bottles.

Sorry, but just not seeing a lot of automotive dashboards and door panels in the rivers when I go fly fishing.

the vast majority of the micro plastic pollution problems are hiding in plain sight, beverage /food container liners, bubble wrap, plastic grocery bags, dry cleaner bags and the like. Fisher Price toys and car parts are not the problem.

 

[jsus]

A scary old wives tale.
Those batteries will not be in land fill, it's illegal and they're too valuable full of precious metals not to mention lithium. EV battery recycling is just getting started simply because there hasn't been enough to be profitable until now.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a44022888/electric-car-battery-recycling/

Not only that, but EV batteries that still have some life in them left to give can be repurposed for uses such as home backup systems, in lieu of a generator. Generally, an EV battery will be a life-of-vehicle product, as by the time there is significant reduction in range, the vehicle will either be totaled or otherwise scrapped for age/other wear.

 

[OB1e]

Seen it first hand. You can recycle alllll the plastic you want. Until Asia stops polluting the ocean, it doesn't matter what you do. The plastic they find in birds and sea turtles, all has Chinese/Japanese written on it.

 

[fossil]

Don't forget all the plastic on windmill blades that go off into the air and soil as the blades deteriorate from UV and the like. An inconvenient truth in this day and age it seems.

Interesting subject starting with, is a resin and glass fiber blend a plastic? Been around boats all my life and have never seen one dissolve into the ground, surface oxidize yes, have buffed out a few. regardless old blades are a problem. People are starting to see them as a raw material. A company down the road from me is chopping them up making them into durable park furniture.

another company somewhere is running them through a shredder and using the results as aggregate for use in concrete and blacktop. I don't see that as a big industry (not enough blades) but if the windmill folks throw them a few bucks for disposal it could be viable, better than in a land fill.

 

[jsus]

Interesting subject starting with, is a resin and glass fiber blend a plastic? Been around boats all my life and have never seen one dissolve into the ground, surface oxidize yes, have buffed out a few. regardless old blades are a problem. People are starting to see them as a raw material. A company down the road from me is chopping them up making them into durable park furniture.

another company somewhere is running them through a shredder and using the results as aggregate for use in concrete and blacktop. I don't see that as a big industry (not enough blades) but if the windmill folks throw them a few bucks for disposal it could be viable, better than in a land fill.

They've even been used to build bridges!

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/in...-as-footbridge-structure-elements-02-08-2023/

 

[Bob The Builder]

Interesting subject starting with, is a resin and glass fiber blend a plastic? Been around boats all my life and have never seen one dissolve into the ground, surface oxidize yes, have buffed out a few. regardless old blades are a problem. People are starting to see them as a raw material. A company down the road from me is chopping them up making them into durable park furniture.

another company somewhere is running them through a shredder and using the results as aggregate for use in concrete and blacktop. I don't see that as a big industry (not enough blades) but if the windmill folks throw them a few bucks for disposal it could be viable, better than in a land fill.

Varies, but many are around 25% PP. A 1.5-MW turbine, typical blades should measure 110 ft to 124 ft (34m to 38m) in length, typically weigh about 5000 kg each source: Composites world.

Lots of PP as you can see.

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