Science & technology | The Scrap Kings

Scrapyards adopt new high-tech ways to dismantle cars

Advanced “deproduction” lines are turning the car business into a circular industry

A crushed scrap car is loaded by crane onto a lorry.
Picked clean and ready for recyclingImage: Getty Images
|Poole

Hanging on the wall in the offices of Charles Trent, a vehicle-recycling company based in Poole on Britain’s south coast, is a black-and-white photograph from the 1920s. It shows rows of old jalopies piled high in the scrapyard. Marc Trent, Charles’s great-grandson and the firm’s current boss, smiles at the photo and remarks: “those days have long gone.”

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “The new scrap kings”

From the July 22nd 2023 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

More from Science & technology

A person blowing about a pattern in the shape of a brain

Can you breathe stress away?

Scientists are only beginning to understand the links between the breath and the mind

The Economist’s science and technology internship

We invite applications for the 2025 Richard Casement internship


A man sits inside a pixelated pink brain while examining a clipboard, with colored squares falling from the brain

A better understanding of Huntington’s disease brings hope

Previous research seems to have misinterpreted what is going on


Is obesity a disease?

It wasn’t. But it is now

Volunteers with Down’s syndrome could help find Alzheimer’s drugs

Those with the syndrome have more of a protein implicated in dementia

Should you start lifting weights?

You’ll stay healthier for longer if you’re strong