[joe_padavano]

The ironic thing about this is that putting these cars in wrecking yards instead of just crushing them is actually recycling. If you melt the car down, that takes energy and creates pollution. If you simply pull parts off of it and use them to replace broken parts, a) this does not cause pollution when the car is simply sitting in a wrecking yard, and b) by using a used part instead of a new one (if you could even get one), no energy is used or emissions created to build the new part. Add to that the fact that there is no additional environmental impact due to packaging of the new part, transportation of the new part cross country, heating and cooling of the new part in a warehouse or store, etc.