Most people picture car scrapping as a big machine squashing a hatchback into a cube. That bit does happen, but it is the last step of a much longer process. Before any vehicle goes near a crusher, it has to be stripped of everything that could leak, burn or explode. The industry calls this depollution, and it is the legal heart of end of life vehicle disposal in the UK.

Here is what actually comes off and out of a car at an Authorised Treatment Facility, and where each part ends up.

The battery goes first

The 12 volt lead-acid battery is usually the first thing disconnected. Lead is toxic and valuable in roughly equal measure, so batteries are collected separately and sent to specialist recyclers. Lead plates are melted and reused, the acid is neutralised or turned into sodium sulphate, and the plastic casing is shredded for new casings. Lead-acid batteries are among the most successfully recycled products in the world, with recovery rates well above 95%.

Electric and hybrid vehicles are a different job entirely. High voltage packs have to be isolated by trained staff before anything else happens, then sent to battery specialists for reuse in storage systems or for material recovery.

Fuel, oil and every other fluid

A car carries more liquid than people realise. A typical end of life vehicle yields petrol or diesel, engine oil, gearbox oil, brake fluid, power steering fluid, coolant and screenwash, plus air conditioning refrigerant.

Each one is drained into separate sealed tanks. Fuel is often filtered and reused on site to run yard machinery or resold. Waste engine oil can be cleaned and re-refined into base oil or burned as fuel in industrial furnaces. Antifreeze is the sneaky one: ethylene glycol tastes sweet and is dangerously poisonous to pets and wildlife, so it is never allowed to reach a drain. It is collected and either distilled for reuse or treated as hazardous waste.

Air conditioning gas has to be captured with a recovery machine, because releasing refrigerant to the air is both illegal and enormously damaging as a greenhouse gas. One kilogram of some older refrigerants has the warming effect of well over a tonne of carbon dioxide.

Airbags and seatbelt pretensioners

Airbags are small explosive devices. A modern car might have eight or more, plus pyrotechnic seatbelt pretensioners in each front seat. Leaving them live in a vehicle that is about to be crushed would be genuinely dangerous, so they are either deployed deliberately under controlled conditions or removed intact.

Once fired, the metal housings go into the general steel stream. Undeployed units in good condition are sometimes kept for reuse, though rules around this are strict.

Tyres, wheels and the catalytic converter

Tyres must come off before crushing. Whole tyres cannot go to landfill in the UK, so they are graded: anything with enough tread and no damage becomes a part-worn tyre, and the rest is shredded. Shredded rubber crumb turns up in playground surfaces, equestrian arenas, artificial pitches and road surfacing, or is burned as fuel in cement kilns.

Alloy wheels are worth good money separately as clean aluminium. Catalytic converters are removed and sent for precious metal recovery, because the honeycomb inside holds tiny quantities of platinum, palladium and rhodium.

Parts worth reselling

Before the shell moves on, anything in working order that has a market gets pulled: alternators, starter motors, doors, wing mirrors, headlights, gearboxes, seats and body panels. Reused parts keep older cars on the road affordably and save the energy that would go into making new ones.

This is also why we always advise people not to strip a car themselves. Removing wheels or the catalytic converter before collection makes the vehicle harder to transport and lowers what a yard will pay. Our guide on how to scrap my car explains why leaving it complete gets you the best price.

What is left

Once depolluted, the shell is a fairly clean lump of steel, aluminium, copper and plastic. That is what gets crushed and shredded, then separated by magnets, air classifiers and eddy currents into metal streams for the furnaces.

UK facilities in our network recycle at least 85% of every vehicle by weight, with many hitting 95%. You get paid, the metal goes back into the supply chain and the nasty stuff is handled properly.

Ready to move your old car on? Get an instant scrap car quote and book free collection anywhere in the UK.