Yamaha Is Recycling Aluminum To Build New Engines

It's a small-scale experiment, but the goal will cut carbon emissions by 47,000 tons each year by 2030.

Photo by: Yamaha

By: Jonathon Klein

Oct 13, at 8:02am ET

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Recycling for the consumer was basically a con developed by corporations to put the onus of saving the planet on us, the customers, even though it'd never work. It sucks to say that, but it's largely true, and much of our individual commitment to recycling means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme compared to large corporations and their own landfill-bound refuse.

That glass candied jalepeno jar you reccycled the other day is not even a drop in the bucket, though you should still do it.

Where recycling truly matters is with those same corporations that put all that pressure onto us to recycle. Those same large companies with tons and tons of trash and half-processed materials that aren't used, i.e., vehicle manufacturers. And with that in mind, it's great to see the folks over at Yamaha start addressing this issue by announcing that it'll begin to use recycled aluminum in a handful of new engines.

Good work, Yamaha.

"Until now, Yamaha Motor has used virgin aluminium alloy as the raw material for DiASil Cylinders," states the release, adding, "This is because conventional recycled materials contain trace amounts of impurities, making it difficult to meet the quality standards required for DiASil Cylinders in terms of metal microstructure, surface properties, corrosion resistance, and other characteristics."

Yamaha then added the crux of the program, stating, "To address these challenges, Yamaha began developing a recycled aluminium alloy providing traits comparable to virgin aluminium that can be used to manufacture parts and components with the same production processes." Basically, Yamaha developed a process that allowed the company to process the recycled material into a virtually identical material to "virgin" aluminum with the same properties as it was, i.e., it could hold up to all the pressures, heat, and durability requirements as the brand-new material.

And that's cool as shit.

What do you think?

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Right now, Yamaha says that it'll use the recycled aluminum to manufacture its DiASil cylinders that go into a host of scooters and motorcycles. At least, at first. Yamaha goes on to state that to meet its 2050 goals, it'll continue that process into the future. Moreover, this single recycling process will reduce the company's carbon output by 47,000 tons a year by 2030, with the first few production models to be debuted and manufactured for Indonesia.

Hopefully, more manufacturers throughout the powersports industry, as well as the rest of the vehicle industry, start doing more things like this. Because, like I said, there's only so much an average person can do, even if millions of people are doing it, compared to what a company like Yamaha or others throw away and toss into the landfills of the world. There are only so many jalepeno jars I can recycle compared to Ford tossing a couple hundred tons of aluminum after it stamped out a new F-150, you know?