More Fallout from Cash for Clunkers

Last month we took a look back at the 2009 Cash for Clunkers program and found that industry analysts had determined that instead of providing the American auto industry with a boost, the optimistic $2.85 billion program wasted millions of taxpayer dollars and caused the destruction of thousands of used cars. In addition to wasting money and destroying cars, the only real benefit for the auto industry was a forward shift in the purchase of new vehicles at the time, and then only by a few months at best. The program was initially sold as a way to bolster America’s struggling economy on the path to recovery. We know the economic benefits did not materialize, but what about the part of the Clunkers program that was intended to help the environment?

Back in 2009, the president said the Clunkers program would help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve the quality of the air we breathe. As with the unrealized economic benefits, it appears that the beneficial environmental effects of thousands of consumers trading in their gas-guzzling clunkers for fuel-efficient new cars did not materialize either. After examining the environmental impacts, some analysts are now saying that the program may have harmed the environment by generating tons of unnecessary waste while doing little to stem overall greenhouse gas emissions. The program actually did very little to clean up the air because even though 690,000 less fuel efficient cars were traded in, that number was a drop in the bucket compared to the 250 million total vehicles registered in the U.S., making the difference in overall pollutant levels insignificant. It also did not help that many of the thousands of cars traded-in were in relatively good condition with fuel efficiencies that actually rivaled newer cars.

Another environmental failure appears to come from the program’s focus on shredding cars instead of recycling them. Although it has been proven that nearly every part of a car can be recycled in some way, most of the cars in the Clunkers program were never recycled at all. Instead, program guidelines required all of the cars’ engines to be destroyed and the remaining parts sent to junkyards to be shredded, not recycled. The engine blocks were rendered permanently inoperative and completely unusable for recycling by filling them with a sodium silicate (liquid glass) solution that hardened in the crankcase. Although the remaining parts of a car could legally be sold after the destruction of the engine, the program guidelines also required that after 180 days in storage, what remained of each car had to be sent to a junkyard and shredded. In the real world, this ensured that most of the clunkers were shredded.

The destruction mandated by federal law not only prevented most dealers from reselling the parts later, it also created tons of unnecessary waste for the environment at the same time. Every ton of metal produced by a shredding facility also generates some 500 pounds of residue that includes environmentally toxic plastic foams and metal oxides. After shredding, the residue is not recycled and it ends up in our landfills. In contrast, some now claim that recycling just the plastic and metal residues alone from the 690,000 trade-ins could have saved over 20 million barrels of oil. Far from a win for both the environment and America’s economy, the Cash for Clunkers program appears to have been a bad idea that still bears hidden economic and environmental costs for the nation today.