Retiring rides

Euthanizing a car is never an easy decision.

But there’s a right and a wrong way to do it, says the project manager of the company behind the provincially funded Retire Your Ride program. Rebecca Spring said the country’s national vehicle recycling program has been designed to get older vehicles off the road, using incentives to encourage participation.

“A 1995 or older model year vehicle produces 19 times the amount of smog-forming emissions than a newer vehicle does,” Spring said, explaining the logic behind the cutoff date for the program, which is scheduled to end on March 31, 2011, more than two years after it began.

“Really the first purpose of the program is to get these older vehicles off the road that are causing smog, that are causing air-quality issues. The secondary portion of the program is that once we receive these vehicles we make sure they are properly treated at the end of their lives.”

Bring on the auto surgeons.

If it’s toxic, it goes, says Lisa Sticca, vice-president of Thunder Bay Auto Parts, one of three companies in the city officially registered with the Retire Your Ride Program, which pays $300 per vehicle that meets the criteria, which includes being currently licensed and insured.

Participants also have the option to take up to $490 off a high-end bicycle.

To begin, the tires are removed. If salvageable, they are re-sold to the public.

If not they are re-used in other ways through the Ontario Tire Stewardship program. Fluids are drained and mercury switches removed and stored for safe-keeping.

“The batteries are either re-used or sold to licensed salvage facilities. The fuel is drained and used in our own vehicles. The anti-freeze and the windshield washer fluid are either re-used or given to our customers for free. Then the vehicles are then parted out and the salvageable parts are re-sold. Then there is less manufacture of new parts,” Sticca said.

In two years Sticca’s company has retired about 1,000 vehicles through the program, which says to her that the public understands the environmental impact old cars and trucks can make in the city.

“We average about 45 vehicles a month,” she said. “This year, with the Retire Your Ride program we’ve done over 500 through our shop here. We have people calling us every day.”

Retire Your Ride is delivered nationally by Sumerhill Impact and funded by the federal government.