HallCraft proudly celebrates Global Recycling Day – by restating its commitment to sustainability.
The leading independent garage in the West Midlands has a recycling program aimed to recycle as much waste as possible in accordance with Environmental Agency guidelines.
Any parts that can be reused or repurposed will be even though it adds costs to the Cradley Heath business.
Independent businesses like HallCraft must try to lead the way on recycling and sustainability and Global Recycling Day provides the perfect opportunity.
The day has been celebrated annually on March 18th since 2018 to remind everyone of the desire to save a billion tonnes of CO2 emissions by 2030.
“We take our responsibilities to the planet seriously, we know we must all do our bit to protect the environment for generations to come,” explained boss James Hopcraft.
“There is lots of focus on electric vehicles and vehicle emissions as being the way for the motor industry to clean up its act but not many people stop to think about what happens to the broken parts when they come to us for a repair or service.
“That’s why we decided many years ago that we have to think carefully ourselves about the things we could do differently to help create positive changes to protect the planet and do our bit to be better.
“It is not cheap and I can see why some smaller businesses struggle but it is the right thing to do. We must all work harder to protect the environment for future generations.”
HallCraft’s recycling program includes everything it can from complete engines, engine oil, filters, brake fluid, and batteries. All scrap metal is recycled whilst paint thinners and antifreeze are disposed of in ways that present minimal impact on the environment.
Many of the major manufacturers including the likes of Ford, who operate an Exchange Program, will accept broken or damaged parts when purchasing new allowing them to repurpose and recycle whatever they can.
HallCraft has been one of the leading UK specialists in Ford Transit van wet belt replacements and tragically, too many of those repairs have resulted in new engines following catastrophic engine failure.
The Ford Exchange program allows HallCraft to send the old engine and its parts back to the manufacturer when purchasing a replacement providing them with crucial feedback and the opportunity to further their recycling efforts.
“The Ford Exchange program is a terrific example of how we can work together. They take back the old engine and will reuse the metals or sometimes parts whilst being able to examine broken elements to learn why and how parts failed,” James added.
“The Ford Transit van wet belt failure is an important example whereby they were originally recommending that customers replace their timing belt at the 144,000 mark, which our opinion was way too long to leave it.
“We were seeing vans fail before they got to 100,000 miles and then it was too late as it meant an entire engine replacement rather than a routine belt replacement.
“Fortunately, Ford recently updated their advice to 100,000-mile or six-year intervals, but HallCraft still recommends customers have their timing and oil pump belts replaced before this, closer to the 80,000-to-90,000-mile mark.
“It has led to us having to recycle way too many Ford EcoBlue diesel engines than we would have liked but at least we were able to recycle rather than scrap.
“Our commitment to the environment isn’t just in the workshop. We have electric courtesy cars as part of our fleet, energy-saving bulbs and as well recycling our paper we are trying to reduce our overall paper consumption, all these smaller elements add up.
“We should use Global Recycle Day to all examine what we do and see if we can make changes to be better.”
Environmental laws require garages to use a registered waste carrier as not all waste carriers dispose of garage waste in the same way.
HallCraft uses organisations that strive to recover and recycle the maximum amount of product from the waste and then choose disposal routes that cause the minimum impact on the environment.
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