Recycling End-of-Life Vehicles - An Issue for Policy Makers or the Free Market?

Technology and economics have limited the degree to which old automobiles are recycled. For environmental reasons, European governments have adopted policies that will increase that rate of recycling. However, contrasting the economic, political, and environmental situations in North America and Europe reveals that an automobile recycling policy for the U.S. would be superfluous, costly, and not significantly beneficial at this time.