Have you ever asked yourself, “What should I do with my old car that has not been operational for months and has been sitting behind my garage?” A few years ago I had a car that was not much to look at, and I believed it would never run again after sitting so long in the hot sun. The paint was peeling badly and all of the tires were flat.

I ended up paying a junkyard to send a tow vehicle to remove the thing from my property. It had already cost me more than I wanted to spend on it. Still, with the kids playing around that old car near the garage, I felt that snakes or rats might be around it. So I really did have to get rid of the poor old thin.

I thought about running an advertisement on a local Internet page which is designed to sell used cars, but I received no inquiries so I cancelled the ad. And my neighbors said a couple of things to me about the “pet rust bucket in the back yard”. It was becoming a bad neighborhood joke and a real eye sore.

While surfing the Internet recently, I learned about the Salvation Army car donation program. When I did some research on their Web site, I noticed that they are willing to send a tow truck at no charge to pick up the car as long as I will simply donate it to them. I wish I had known about their program a few years ago. I asked a friend about this program and he told me how to arrange for the tow truck to find the keys and title to the car, even if I’m not at home. That’s what he did for his Mom’s car.

I wish I had known about the Salvation Army’s old car program. They’ll even give you a receipt you can report as a charitable donation on your taxes (if you claim donations). I would have felt better about recycling the car for a good cause than just paying someone to haul it away to sell for parts or scrap.

The Environmental Impact of Abandoned Cars

Every year millions of cars are retired from service. They are sent to junk yards where they are stripped down for parts. Finally what remains is an empty husk that can be crushed and recycled.

But not every old car is handled properly. Some vehicles are left to rot in out-of-the-way places or even beside people’s homes. Whatever the reasons for not recycling the vehicles, their owners are slowly contributing to pollution.

Toxic chemicals leach from these old cars into the ground. They poison local wild life and the water table. If the owner draws water from the ground for any reason they are recycling the poisons that haven’t been properly disposed of.

And abandoned vehicles are eyesores. Why keep them sitting around when they will never be driven again?

It will take hundreds, maybe thousands of years for an old car to completely rot away.