The other day I replaced the Windshield Wipers on my Honda Accord and our Toyota Camry. After I was done I took all the packaging, and put it in the recycling bin. I usually try to recycle as much as I can, as I feel this is being a responsible and respectful citizen.
Something occurred to me while I was about to throwout the old Windshield Wipers, Why aren't they recyclable? Think about this for a moment, there have to be millions upon millions of Windshield Wipers that are replaced every year on all the cars and trucks on our roads. Then there must be millions and millions of old ones being tossed in the garbage. All those Windshield Wipers and Wiper Blades are crowding our landfills. I think they are going there unnecessarily.
Wipers are made of plastic and rubber, meaning they should be able to be recycled easily. I bet it wouldn't be to hard to reconstitute the plastic and rubber in them. TV's and old electronics are broken everyday and are given new life in form or new metals, glass, plastic etc.. So why not Windshield Wipers and Wiper Blades?
There might even be savings involved if manufacturers didn't have to spend as much money on buying new materials to make Windshield Wipers and Wiper Blades. They could be collecting old ones, and breaking them down to be recycle and reused for maker new Wipers. This would save money and precious resources. (They would also get extra brownie points from environmentalists!)
To start what I think could be a revolution of recycling Windshield Wipers, I put the old ones in the recycling bin. I don't know if they will be recycled, but it would be cool if they were!
Please share your thoughts on this. Do you think Windshield Wipers and Wiper Blades should be recyclable too?
I don’t know what year Honda you have but the blades on our ’14 Crv use refills all you do us take old rubber out take stainless tension springs off old rubber put into new rubber blades and slide back into wiper frame . cheap too. 6.00 each from dealer.
I typically find those blade refills more trouble than they are worth. Taking them off is easy but it can be difficult to get them back onto the blade. Often times the hardware on the wiper itself is cheap so it wears out quickly. When you take it apart it might not tension correctly or something might break. At least this has been my experience when I worked as an entry level auto technician in a shop.
Nowadays I buy frameless wipers now which are more expensive but last a lot longer. So in the end I save money and I don’t need to worry about changing my wiper blades as much.
I wish there was a way. My wipers are metal frames with the rubber blade. The cost saving would be wiped out by the labor needed to separate, and sort the remaining material. The melting and forming costs the same regardless. But there is a huge nervy saving from the lack of having to mine new material. Or make them all compostable plastic since they only need to last a year (two at most)
I am sure all the money auto parts companies make they could figure it out David. Right? Are you in the recycling business?
Yes, I agree windshield wiper blades should be recyclable. How in the heck do we do it?
The only issue is, windshield wipers can’t go in recycling Bins directly because they are mixed materials. Because it is not all one material (paper, aluminum cans) etc that cannot be recycled with the general Recycling. it would just be removed because it would mess up the process and will be dumped as trash. the best bet would be to find a company that will reuse them or recycle them