It's Halloween on Monday. That means plenty of little ghouls and goblins traipsing through Styrofoam graveyards.

Timely, then, for my recent conversation with University of Windsor post-doctoral fellow Susan Sawyer-Beaulieu; she has spent the past eight years researching what happens to endof-life vehicles (ELVs).

Usually, they end up in an automotive graveyard or boneyard in preparation for recycling - only to come back to life embodied in other objects, such as lawn mowers and patio furniture.

Sawyer-Beaulieu says not many Canadians give much thought to where or how a vehicle will go in its end days.

"The auto industry has had to look at how they can make vehicles more fuel efficient, reduce emissions and generally make them more economical," says Sawyer-Beaulieu on the telephone from her home office in Windsor, Ont. "A lot of work has been done to green the vehicle.

"But what happens at the end of life doesn't get as much attention as other phases of the vehicle life cycle."

Sawyer-Beaulieu maintains that there has been much more research in the manufacturing and use phases of the vehicle life cycle - how a vehicle is built, how long it lasts and how efficient it is.

With a background in mining and environmental engineering, Sawyer-Beaulieu has spent time working in industry while also pursuing her education. It was while employed at a metals recycling facility that she gained experience in that field before she began her PhD studies under Edwin Tam at the University of Windsor.

With funding provided in part by Auto21 - a multidisciplinary, auto-related research and development initiative with the goal of advancing the Canadian auto industry - and the Ontario Automotive Recyclers Association, Sawyer-Beaulieu worked with Tam to understand just what happens when an automobile dies.

Sawyer-Beaulieu assessed just what goes into an auto dismantler's facility, what gets recycled and reused and what goes through the shredder, and ultimately, to the landfill.

In Canada each year 1.2 million vehicles reach their retirement age.

Those end-of-life vehicles can be broken down into two categories, according to Sawyer-Beaulieu.

The first is a high salvage endof-life vehicle, which is usually a late model car or truck with higher value parts.

The second is a low salvage end-of-life vehicle, one that could either be older or else newer but wrecked beyond any hope of parts recovery, and has little or no value in parts.

Sawyer-Beaulieu's research showed the average age of a high salvage vehicle was seven years, while the average age of a low salvage vehicle was 15 years.

Auto wreckers usually accept both high and low salvage vehicles, and it is at such a dismantling facility - larger wreckers handle close to 17,000 cars per year - where cars are drained of all fluids, and any reusable, remanufacturable or recyclable items are removed.

Reusable parts are items such as doors, mirrors, wheels and the like. Remanufacturable items include starters, alternators and power steering pumps. Recyclable parts include batteries, tires and catalytic converters.

What is left of a vehicle is crushed and sent to a metal recycling facility, where the "hulk" is shredded together with large appliances and other renovation metal waste.

"They get chewed up as metals and non-metals, and there is a downstream process to separate the glass, upholstery, foam, rugs and plastic trim from the metals," Sawyer-Beaulieu says.

The metal is recovered, while the non-recovered material - as much as 15 to 20 per cent of a vehicle - typically ends up in the landfill as "shredder residue."

"It's very hard to separate materials out once it's in the form of shredder residue," Sawyer-Beaulieu says.

So, that is where Sawyer-Beaulieu has begun to focus much of her research. She is working to identify what other parts or materials should be targeted for removal at the dismantling phase - before the hulk is sent for shredding.

For example, seat assemblies. Often, an auto dismantler must remove the seats to gain access to the parts they plan to sell or recycle.

However, when that is done, the seats go back into the vehicle ultimately to be crushed and shredded.

"If the trouble was taken to remove the seats, it's sad to see them go back in and sent to shredding," Sawyer-Beaulieu says

"Would it be more economical to develop a system to process a seat assembly separate from the hulk?"

She adds: "We've still got a long way to go to learn how better to manage end-of-life vehicles."

However, Sawyer-Beaulieu is continuing her research with a $70,000 grant from the MITAC's Elevate program, and she believes there is an opportunity to develop a much more progressive automotive recycling industry in what has traditionally been North America's automotive manufacturing hub - Windsor and Detroit, Mich.

Have an auto related item to share for the column or What's Next? Contact Greg Williams at 403-287-1067 or gregwilliams@shaw.ca. Visit his website at gregwilliams.ca.