Scrap Catalytic Converters For Money and Peace of Mind

Before we talk about why you should recycle a catalytic converter, let’s first discuss what it is and what function it has in a vehicle.

Most cars after 1975 had catalytic converters installed in them. The basic function of a catalytic converter is to take harmful chemicals in car exhaust and change them into nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide and water. How do they perform this important function? There are precious metals in a catalytic converter, namely platinum, palladium and rhodium, and those metals are formed into honeycombed bricks with narrow passages. As the auto exhaust goes through these passages, the precious metals cause a chemical change in the exhaust.

So why should we scrap catalytic converters? Two main reasons: one, it is much less expensive to recycle platinum, palladium and rhodium than it is to mine and refine them; secondly, scrapyards like Cash-n-Carry and their new division Cars and Cores will pay cash for the scrap metal. So it’s a good deal for the environment and it’s a good deal for someone who wants to scrap a car or parts of a car.

How does one recycle these precious metals? The quick and easy answer is that the average car owner should never even attempt it. Taking your scrap catalytic converter to a professional car dismantler is the only logical way to recycle these metals that are relied upon so heavily by the automotive industry. The pros at Cash-n-Carry know what they are doing and exactly how to extract those metals from the catalytic converter so that they can be used again in the production of a new converter.

This is a facet of recycling that often goes unnoticed. We all know not to drain automotive fluids into the ground, right? We all know that plastic is not biodegradable, right? We all know that scrap tires are dangerous to the soil, right? But there are certain scrap parts of your vehicle that, if recycled, simply help the environment by making it unnecessary to mine as many precious metals.

No matter how you look at it, recycling a car at a scrapyard is the right thing to do!