Hope for ASR? (Scrap Industry News).DaimlerChrysler Corp., Auburn Hills, Mich., has been recognized as the 2002 "Environmentalist environmentalist a person with an interest and knowledge about the interaction of humans and animals with the environment. of the Year" by the Environmental Research and Education Foundation (EREF EREF Environmental Research and Education Foundation EREF Employee Referral ). The automaker was among 24 nominees who vied for the award, which was announced by EREF at its board meeting in Austin, Texas. DaimlerChrysler was selected in recognition of its "extraordinary leadership contributions toward activities related to waste recycling, processing, reuse and disposal," according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. an EREF news release. DaimlerChrysler's CARE (Concepts for Advanced Recycling and Environmental) Car II program was recognized for its emphasis on using recycled content plastic to make plastic automotive components. While the metal portion of automobiles is traditionally recycled easily into new metal products, the plastics portion has been more problematic. As part of the project, Chrysler Group used automotive shredder residue The shredding of automobiles and major household appliances is a process where a hammermill acts as a giant tree chipper by grinding the materials fed into it to fist-size pieces. The shredding of automobiles results in a mixture of ferrous metal, non-ferrous metal (e.g. (ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) Using voice recognition to replace keypad entry for telephone voice menus. Typically used to speak the digits 0 through 9 insted of keying them, ASR systems may be able to recognize a limited vocabulary. See voice recognition and AVSR. ) as material for components used in new cars. Chrysler worked with 26 production suppliers and Recovery Plastics International (RPI RPI - Rockwell Protocol Interface ), Salt Lake City, Utah For ships of the United States Navy of the same name, see . Salt Lake City is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. The name of the city is often shortened to Salt Lake, or its initials, S.L.C. , to retrofit two Jeep Grand Cherokees with 54 recycled plastic parts. Chrysler says it is the first automaker to use RPI's proprietary plastic flotation technology to separate the myriad of plastic types found in ASR--most of which is currently landfilled- and use the recovered plastic to manufacture new vehicle parts. The recycled parts meet the same material specifications required for production vehicles and were manufactured by the Chrysler Group's suppliers. The suppliers used current production molds and processes to produce the parts--at a lower cost than using virgin plastic, according to the company. Chrysler Group estimates that the recycled plastic can save $10 to $20 per vehicle. The goals of the CARE program are to increase the recyclability and recovery of automobiles from 75 percent to about 95 percent by weight and to increase the use of recycled materials in production vehicles. Reclaiming the plastic portion of ASR created by auto shredders will be necessary to meet that goal. Bernard Robertson of DaimlerChrysler accepted the award in late June. |
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