Auto Shredder Residues - A Waste or a Valuable Resource?

Auto Shredder Residue (ASR), the waste produced by North American Shredding operations in the recovery and recycling of metals from scrapped automobiles, is currently disposed of in landfill sites. Preliminary studies conducted in our laboratory have indicated that this material could have potential as a fixation media for heavy metal contaminated waste streams. Possible lead contamination species have been mixed with ASR and the degree of adsorption has been determined. The results suggest that ASR, or at least the plastic and polymeric components in ASR, may have beneficial applications in treating other industrial waste streams while technologically feasible reuse/recovery processes are found for the increasing amounts of plastic being used in the automobile sector.