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Seven recycled products that end up being a part of your car

Recycling household and industrial waste has become a trend of the new millennium, with the growing consciousness among people to save planet earth from the adversities of nature. With latest launches, even car companies have joined in the revolution of the new recycling technology to assist in making parts of their car using natural ingredients, which would otherwise be a part of landfills and pollute our planet. One of the most reputed brands of cars, the Ford, has joined hands with Ohio State University to explore possibilities of substituting wild weeds, grown in our gardens, with synthetic rubber which can be utilized to make cup holders , floor mats and interior trims of the car. It is even experimenting with other natural fibers like coconut and hemp while cork materials and bamboo are already a part of their eco-style editions.

Following the footsteps of Ford, even Toyota is using materials derived from Kenaf which is a mixture of cotton and okra fibers and ramie plants which are vegetable fibers for the roofs of its cars. Even banana fibers are used for protection of undercarriage of the cars.

Going one step ahead of the above two, Mazda, another renowned automobile company, has been ranked as the first automakers to recycle scrap bumpers into a material which can be used to make new vehicle bumpers.

Let’s discuss seven such recycled products that end up being a part of your car.

1. Denim

If you do not fit into your old pair of jeans, you can be rest assured that Ford Focus can fix it up by recycling cotton from these clothing wastes for the carpet backing and as a sound-absorbing material for the interior of your car. Even ‘Buick Verano’ is utilizing these components as sound insulators between the rear body structures of its vehicles.

2. Carpet

Nylon from recycled carpet is being ground up into fibers along with a secret step to extract nylon resin called EcoLon, which in turn, is being used by Ford on the cylinder head cover of some of its car engines. Statistics reveal that consistent use of Ecolon in the year 2010 has led to the saving of 4.1 million pounds of carpets from being a part of landfill wastes, which can be equated as an area covering154 football fields.

3. Wood fibers

Though not in markets as yet, electric Ford Focus has gleaned out a material from 85 percent wood fibers called Lignotock to be used behind the cloth of its doors. This newly invented method of recycling wood wastes results in both reduction of weight as well as ensuring sound deadening properties.

4. Water bottles

Another ingredient used as sound insulation layers in areas such as dashboards of cars is by using discarded plastic bottle caps fibers. This has been started voluntarily by Nissan, which is further in the process of making actual motor parts from these wastes. Also, Nissan’s electric Leaf, made from 99 percent recyclable material, has been ear-marked as a remarkable model whose seats are a result of a material extracted by grinding plastic water bottles.

5. Cardboard

21,600 tonnes of cardboard wastes have been recycled last year by GM and its models like Buick La Crosse and Verrano are live examples of this process. A substrate fabricated supporting material derived from recycled cardboard has been used for the backing of its headliners. This not only improves its acoustics, but also imparts good sound-absorbing and quiet interiors.

6. Corn

In an urge to extract a plant based fiber to take over from petroleum and other synthetic fiber for making resins for its cars, Honda switched to corn, extracting a Bio Fabric polyester material by fermenting and processing natural corn kernels. This newly invented material’s texture provided a useful source for the lining of the doors, console trays, armrests and seat covers to adorn the interiors of their cars.

7. Oil spill booms

The destructive oil spill of the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 has resulted in providing one positive approach towards recycling oil-soaked absorbent booms for making air deflecting baffles around the Chevy Volt radiators. However, these deflectors constitute 25 percent plastic boom, 25 percent recycled tires, 25 percent packaging plastic and the remaining 25 percent are extracted from polymers and post-consumer recycled plastic.

Making constructive use of waste products not only assist in recycling them, but also prevents these wastes from acquiring large stretches of land in the form of landfills and dumping grounds. A collective effort from all of us can definitely bring about noteworthy and faster results in saving the world from the evils of synthetic trash.

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