Page 6 - BusinessWest July 7, 2025

Brian Bachand shows off an engine that has been removed,
drained of fluids, and readied for recycling.
Staff Photo
parts harvesting in order to get the most use out of already manu-
factured products.
Both Griffith and Bachand emphasized that the program is
totally voluntary and doesn’t involve a mandated destruction time-
frame like the 2009 government program called the Car Allowance
Rebate System. Cash for Clunkers, as it was known colloquially,
was controversial for several reasons, including doubts about envi-
ronmental benefit in that many of the cars weren’t at end of life, and
were immediately replaced with new purchases, which also spiked
used car prices.
“The government’s not involved, we are not mandated to crush
the car within 60 days like Cash for Clunkers, and we’re not
destroying any of the parts,” Bachand said. “We cannot sell the
motor out of the vehicle because the whole point of the program is
reducing carbon footprint and lowering emissions.
“By taking these vehicles in, we’re still promoting the circular
economy because, even though it’s a SHiFT car and I can’t sell
that motor as a running, driving motor, I can still sell parts of that
vehicle, so I can still keep people up and running. There’s still
other drive train elements that I can sell off — whereas, with Cash
for Clunkers, you were mandated to crush it. They destroyed the
motors before we even got them, and that really crippled the auto
recycling industry; there were fewer parts available.”
Griffith noted that vehicles can be 90% recyclable when recycled
properly. Meanwhile, hybrids in particular are full of rare earth
materials, which is a booming industry right now. But in the end,
the most significant benefit of SHiFT is its environmental impact.
“We can count the carbon negation from those engines coming
off the road. One of the value propositions that we have for fleets
is that we can help them meet their internal or sanctioned carbon-
counting goals by committing these engines to be retired and doing
that accounting for them.”
Recycling businesses benefit as well. “We can increase their
increase their net volume just by capturing more vehicles, espe-
cially the ones that would be leaving the country and going overseas
anyhow,” Griffith added. “The auto recyclers get competitive pricing
on these scrap vehicles and can make a fair margin for themselves.
But then two good environmental things happen: the vehicle is
recycled to a very high degree of sustainability, and the engine is
retired.”
Living the Dream
Bachand said his father, Paul, grew up wanting to own a salvage
yard, so Westover Auto Salvage, which he opened in Belchertown
in 1994, was the culmination of a dream. And even though he
earned an accounting degree at Western New England University,
joining — and eventually leading — the company has been Brian’s “It was really
intriguing to
me to figure out
what we do with
vehicles when
they’re truly at
the end of life
and how we
turn that into
environmental
value and not just
treating them like
refuse.”
CHAPIN GRIFFITH
6 << FEATURE >>
JULY 7, 2025
Business W est