I was visiting Standard Auto Wreckers down here in Toronto, Ontario and the place was buzzing with activity!  I saw a film production crew grabbing some coffee near a wrecked Mercedes and tried to squeeze some information out of them, but to no avail.  Later on I caught up with them at the junk car crusher and I did recognize one of my favorite (educational) TV hosts, Ziya Tong!

I could not get the whole scoop, but I do know I will be looking out for the Daily Planet over the next few months to see this very cool episode!!

“Aggressive, top-notch facilities that understand the power of networking and education”.  That is how the Locator Executive V.P Charis Lloyd describes what it takes to be listed in the top 25 most influential recyclers list for 2009.  And our friend David Gold was voted number one, as the most influential auto recycler of 2009!

We caught up with David for a brief chat on Monday morning and when asked how it felt to be voted number one as the most influential auto recycler of 2009 he replied, “I was in shock!  I love the business and love all the great people involved in it.” “It is a huge honor and over at Standard Auto Wreckers we are committed to helping our fellow recyclers across North America and the world.”

Standard Auto Wreckers suggested 10,000 Trees for the Rouge as the recipient of $10,000 in funding late last year and I noticed this awesome sign a while back and thought I would share.

There was an exciting event today at Standard Auto Wreckers where a check for $10,000 was donated to a fantastic local ‘green’ charity, 10,000 trees! The funds came from OARA where members of the association have agreed to pay an extra $20 per vehicle they acquire though the Retire your Ride car recycling program.

In the picture below  you see (from left to right) Ken Gold, Raymond Cho, Colin Creasey and David Gold.

The ARA conference this year was a great success and a lot of fun for all those that attended.  With a tag line like “Experience the Horsepower Driving the Industry” most of us took the challenge quite seriously.

It seems the entries for Standard Auto Wreckers and Car-Part exchanged a few words before the big race.  Rumor is Green-Gold Thunder started talking smack first, whispering things like, “you look like you were born in a junkyard” and “get ready to eat my radioactive dust” – Car-Part High Octane replied with, “hey sissy, at least I don’t glow in the dark”.

In the end every horse that participated was a winner because all racing proceeds went to benefit charity!

For those of you that missed the news a couple of months ago we partnered up with CarsForums.com and we have our own forum area titled Used Auto Parts and Car Recycling – Just today we cracked 2,500 views and are looking forward to having many more visit.

We have some really great topics over there and I would like to encourage our members and visitors to swing-on-over and contribute!

Thanks again to everyone that has helped this partnership become such a great success!!!

It seems those amazing ‘fuel efficient’ hybrids are guzzlers of a different type!

The Prius hybrid automobile is popular for its fuel efficiency, but its electric motor and battery guzzle rare earth metals, a little-known class of elements found in a wide range of gadgetry and consumer goods.  That makes Toyota’s market-leading gasoline-electric hybrid car and other similar vehicles vulnerable to a supply crunch predicted by experts as China, the world’s dominant rare earths producer, limits exports while global demand grows.

Worldwide demand for rare earths, covering 15 entries on the periodic table of elements, is expected to exceed supply by some 40,000 tonnes annually in several years unless major new production sources are developed. One promising U.S. source is a rare earths mine expected to reopen in California by 2012.

A Toyota spokeswoman in Los Angeles declined comment on its resource development plans. But media accounts and industry blogs have reported recently that Toyota has looked at rare earth possibilities in Canada and Vietnam.

Canada’s own Retire your Ride program is an initiative of The Government of Canada, Clean Air Foundation and its partners, designed to enable people to get their high-polluting cars off the road and reward them for doing so. The program is committed to improving air quality by responsibly recycling vehicles and aims to retire at least 50,000 vehicles per year until March 31, 2011.

And this is all fine and dandy and I am a big supporter of anything that encourages folks to help the environment and it even puts a few bucks in their pockets. But there is a big problem when it comes to the fact that these cars need to be running and insured – and they only get $300 for a car in that condition.

What that means (and I know because I was in this situation with my 1994 Concorde that had only 75k kilometers on it) is: I have to get rid of my current car that is serving its purpose of getting me around to work and play but I only get a paltry $300 which won’t even cover one month of my new car payment of $400 for a Honda Civic. So really what is my incentive? Now if it was like the USA and I was getting a $3,500 discount off my new car I would say whoa, that pays for 10 months of my new car and maybe my old one would be dead by then anyways.

It is good to see various car companies coming out with incentives above the $300 the government is offering but to make this program a ‘real’ success I would like to see the minimum amount raised to $900 or even $1,200 for each car brought in through the program.

The ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program now renamed CARS was a huge success in the USA because it offered a real, worthwhile incentive to get old cars off the road, now it is time for the Canadian government to step up and offer more to make the Retire your Ride program even more successful.

Over at Standard Auto Wreckers we are so busy we have vehicles flying in!!!

This feature will likely run only on Monday but as it is the first one I thought Tues. would be acceptable.

Here are some of the more interesting ‘green’  headlines from across the web and the world.

-Southern California Edison has signed a deal under which First Solar will build two solar power generation stations with the potential to provide electricity to 170,000 homes.  The contract, which is subject to the approval of the California Public Utilities Commission sees the First Solar agreeing to complete the two stations by end of year 2015.  Looks bright for their future!

-Here is a bit of cool fuel news, LiveFuels, an algae biofuel start-up, announced a pilot project to grow and harvest algae biofuels in open waters with the help of naturally occurring activities in the ecosystem. The approach is different than other attempts at algae biofuels, in which algae is grown and harvested in a closed environment. The LiveFuels algae pilot farm, set to cover 45 acres of saltwater ponds in Brownsville, Texas, will consist of algae already native to the region.

-General Motors’ announced that it expects that the Chevy Volt will get an eye-popping 230 miles per gallon begs an obvious question: how can the mileage of electric vehicles be compared to gasoline cars? It’s a problem that the Environmental Protection Agency is working on with the Department of Energy, the Society of Auto Engineers, and California.  The EPA also put out a statement saying that it has not tested the Volt for mileage yet and “cannot confirm the economy values claimed by GM.” GM said that its mileage estimate, including triple digit combined city and highway driving, was based on a draft methodology developed by the EPA. The lack of verifiable tests makes us all say, mmmmmmm. But let’s hope for the best and see if we can get North America off of oil dependence.