FW: Columbus Ledger: There's a new option to recycle your old vehicle in Georgia

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From: Mark Woodall <woodal...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2025 8:03 AM

Subject: Columbus Ledger: There's a new option to recycle your old vehicle in Georgia

 

OUR PLANET A new option for GA residents to recycle their clunker in an eco-friendly and free way 

 

By Kala Hunter December 24, 2025 5:00 AM 

 

 If a car is nearing the end of its working life and is worth less than, say, $2,000, a last-ditch choice is to sell it to a dealership or at an auction and say a final goodbye. But that choice is the wrong one, according to Chapin Griffith, the director of SHiFT, a Rhode Island-based vehicle retirement initiative with a presence in Georgia.   “There is no guarantee of what happens with a vehicle when it’s donated to a charity program or sold to an auto recycling center,” Griffith said. 

 

SHiFT is a new program that ensures vehicles are recycled fully, guaranteeing every fluid and material will be responsibly processed or disposed of, protecting the environment from harmful chemicals and supporting the circular economy. They partner with recyclers around the country, who agree to retire engines and reuse parts when applicable — rather than destroy them, as the Cash-for-Clunkers program did in 2009. “Vehicles are over 90% recyclable by mass,” Griffith said. “You can recycle your car like you do cans and paper. The amount of carbon impact you impart can be many, many times the other recycling all of us do every day; a CO2 equivalent to recycling 75,000 cans per year.”

 

 SHiFT partners with automobile recyclers to fully decommission an engine, which Griffith argues is what is lacking in the end-of-life vehicle industry. The partners agree they won’t sell those engines for further use but will recycle them for scrap metal instead, guaranteeing they don’t add further pollution to the atmosphere. A SHiFT-approved recycler processes a Mini Cooper. Pedigree Public Relations Provided by Jeff Lavery The carbon removal is offset by not driving because older cars have lower miles per gallon ratings, according to Griffith. Plus, not having new parts produced saves additional CO2, rather dismantling, refurbishing and reselling. 

 

Despite being founded less than two years ago, SHiFT has 20 partner recycling centers across Georgia ready to recycle vehicles to completion. Georgia has been a top-five state for donations this year, according to Griffith. Anna Coan is one of the donors. Coan, an insurance agent who lives in Atlanta, donated her 2006 Infiniti M35 that had 230,000 miles on it in November. The car was just sitting in Coan’s driveway. She has used other car vehicle donation services, such as going through a radio station year-end event, but she prefers the environmental ethos of SHiFT. “I liked the concept of reusing fluids (like gas, oil, other materials, liquids) when the car goes through SHiFT,” she said. Coan contacted SHiFt in October. One month later, her old Infiniti was towed away for free. 

 

“I didn’t pay anything,” she said. “The hardest part was finding my old title.” Coan received a certificate with a tax deduction (around $500), a thank-you card, and an official carbon dioxide offset of 8.3 tons because she fully recycled her vehicle. The CO2 calculation comes from her vehicle not being driven and coming out of circulation, but it will be even higher when SHiFT calculates carbon negation from the retired engine. “This felt more complete, more practical, and less wasteful to do it this way,” she said. 

 

This vehicle recycling method is gaining popularity. “We have vehicles coming in from Georgia every week,” Griffith said. “We had a record quarter in Q3. We’re growing like crazy.” Most of SHiFT’s auto recyclers in Georgia are in the Atlanta area, but Griffith said they just started partnering with a recycler a bit closer to Columbus, in Montezuma. Regardless, the location of the partner doesn’t necessarily matter to participate because SHiFt comes to you to tow your vehicle away. “Even if there is not an available recycler very close to Columbus residents,” Griffith said, “recycling with SHiFT allows us to tap our larger network to get that vehicle processed.”

Read more at: https://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/environment/article313897406.html#storylink=cpy