(Left) Jean-François Gargya, Director General of CarrXpert
A new initiative to recover used vehicle bumpers impacted by collisions was announced earlier this year by Jean-François Gargya, Director General of CarrXpert, an auto-body service provider in Quebec.
Gargya broke the news during the company’s annual breakfast at the Palais des congrès de Montréal. He said the initiative is about giving back to students in the automotive sector, while also helping to improve the industry’s ecological footprint.
“We are an industry that is quite polluting in terms of damaged vehicles — we have a lot of plastic, a lot of glass, so we want to try to be more eco-friendly,” said Gargya, in an interview with Canadian auto dealer.
CarrXpert has the largest network of collision repair centres in Quebec. Gargya said they change and repair more than 50,000 bumper covers within their network per year.
“We no longer want to bury them in landfills; we want to recover these bumper covers, give them a second life, in a process that will turn them into a type of plastic that can be reused for melting or in other products,” said Gargya.
CarrXpert partnered with Montreal-based Tandem Recycling to recover the bumper covers. Gargya said there is a $5 fee associated with each bumper cover: $4 being the equivalent for the company to retrieve the bumper cover in the workshop, and $1 will be provided to help promote the auto body repair trade across the province of Quebec in all that relates to the promotion of the profession with young people.
Front and back bumpers are often the first to be impacted during a collision, which suggest there may be a significant number of vehicle bumpers that will need to be recuperated.
CarrXpert has more than 340 dealer members operating more than 180 collision repair centres in Quebec. The banner is an affiliate of the Corporation des concessionnaires automobiles du Québec (CCAQ).
