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A Green Solution with Legs

By Trucktruth.com, May 15th, 2009

Remanufacturers have been “recycling” for more than 60 years. During World War II, the tremendous need to reuse automotive and truck parts gave birth to a whole new industry. Natural resources were scarce during wartime, and many of the resources we did have were going to the war effort to build planes, ships, tanks, etc. Remanufacturing met the demand for quality replacements.

The remanufacturing industry helps the environment in a number of different ways:

• Energy Conservation: Lift truck parts are kept out of the re-smelting process longer because of remanufacturing. As a result, millions of barrels of oil or comparable forms of energy are saved.
• Raw Material Conservation: Remanufacturing gives a product numerous lives instead of just one, thereby saving on raw materials. Remanufacturers annually save millions of tons of natural resources such as iron, aluminum, copper, etc.
• Landfill Space Conservation: Landfills are spared from the dumping of millions of tons of iron, aluminum, copper, etc., because of the monetary value the industry places on parts. This “core charge” ensures used parts are returned to be rebuilt.
• Air Pollution Reduction: Once again, keeping parts out of the re-smelting process benefits the environment by reducing the air pollution that is generated by re-smelting.

Studies performed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) concluded that:

• About 50% of the original component is recovered in the remanufacturing process. This can result in annual savings in the U.S. of 8.2 gallons of crude oil from steel manufacturing, 51,500 tons of iron ore, and 6,000 tons of copper and other metals.
• Rebuilt engines require 50% of the energy and 67% of the labor that is required to produce new engines.

Studies by the Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart, Germany demonstrated that:

• The yearly energy saved by remanufacturing worldwide equals the electricity generated by five nuclear power plants or 10,774,000 barrels of crude oil, which corresponds to a fleet of 233 oil tankers.
• The yearly raw materials saved by remanufacturing worldwide would fill 155,000 railroad cars, forming a train 1,100 miles long.

As people grow more and more concerned about the environment, we must seek public policies that will encourage even more remanufacturing. There are enough social and environmental benefits to justify remanufacturing. Also, imagine the benefits if products were originally manufactured with the sole purpose of being rebuilt and not thrown away.

The preceding article has been provided courtesy of American Industrial Transmission. American Industrial Transmission has been remanufacturing thousands of lift truck transmissions and converters since 1977.

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