AUTOMOTIVE REPAIR, RE-USE, RECYCLING

SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainable automotive recycling: protecting the environment by reducing waste to landfill and reducing carbon emissions by extending the life cycle of vehicles and their parts.

Our Values

Sustainability is a fundamental part of Silverlake’s DNA throughout our business model and our culture. As an automotive recycling business founded in 1946 we have 78 years’ operational history in recycling and protecting the environment. We are in the business of giving cars and their parts a second life, reducing their carbon footprint by extending their life cycle.

Our Services

We re-market damaged vehicles, which can be safely repaired according to their salvage code category, on our online auction. We dismantle end-of-life vehicles, quality grade and sell their parts which fall into the safe for re-use category, to insurers, bodyshops, garages, fleet companies and the general public.

We recycle over 96% of all end-of-life vehicles that we process at our Authorised Treatment Facility in Southampton, exceeding the requirements placed on us by the Environment Agency.

We have supplied reclaimed vehicle parts to our customers for decades, both through our full-service VRA Certified solution where our team dismantles parts and provides them quality graded with warranties and provenance history, and our self-service U-Pick-It yard where customers can dismantle their own parts from stocks of 300 breakers updated weekly.

With the growth in demand for reclaimed parts in recent years, we have developed a scalable, commercially viable circular economy, directly responding to the difficulties faced by insurers, bodyshops, garages, fleet managers and the general public when trying to source new parts to repair vehicles. Confidence in our service is at an all time high and use of Silverlake’s reclaimed parts is helping to reduce our customers’ carbon footprints.

Our Commitment

We support the drive for a net zero economy and are committed to the Science Based Targets Initiative [SBTi] with the goal of reducing our carbon emissions by 42% by 2030. We have invested in a bespoke system which is engineered to capture and track our carbon emissions throughout the entire vehicle processing cycle. You can’t reduce what you can’t measure.

We are working towards reducing our carbon emissions by looking at every element of our business processes including:

We use intelligent fleet management software to ensure our transporters and delivery vans are running at maximum capacity and using efficient route planning.
LED sensor lighting is used throughout our facility to minimize energy wastage and we reduce our draw on the national grid via 50KW of solar panels installed on our roof. We plan to increase this to 100KW capacity.
We recycle diesel from end-of-life vehicles and use it to power site equipment.
We recycle all paper and cardboard for packaging of parts in transit.

We have a partnership with a renewable energy company, supplying recycled electric vehicle batteries to help them develop large scale, self-learning battery energy storage systems that work with the National Grid and accelerate decarbonization.

We are committed to Zero Waste to Landfill by 2030. By continuing and expanding our existing investments in innovative recycling and waste reduction strategies we continue to actively reduce our carbon footprint.

We are accredited to ISO 14001 Environment Management System with our Environment Policy and continual management review demonstrating our ongoing commitment to minimising carbon emissions plus any other harmful or wasteful practices.

Recycling to protect the environment

Recycling underpins our operations, supporting the drive to reduce Co2 and protect the environment. As vehicle dismantling & recycling specialists, we recycle over 96% of end-of-life (ELV vehicles, exceeding Environment Agency requirements at our ELV Authorised Treatment Facility in Hampshire.

Repairing vehicles with reclaimed parts from vehicles the same age or younger is increasingly becoming a standard approach in motor insurance collision repairs; helping to maintain premiums, return vehicles to their owners faster and reduce the emissions generated from the production and shipping of new parts. Our trained auto technicians dismantle and quality grade reclaimed parts from cars and motorcycles which the business provides to insurers and bodyshops for approved re-use in motor repairs.

We are proud to be certified to the UK Standard for Reclaimed Parts. Motor consumers can also retrieve their own reclaimed parts from vehicles in our U-Pick-It facility.

ESG and Our Regional Community

We are committed to supporting our regional community and giving back wherever possible. We have partnered with Global’s Make Some Noise [GMS] to support small charities in our area with our U-Donate-A-Car scheme.

People selling their vehicles to us have the option of donating some, or all, of the money to charity and we handle all the necessary paperwork and collect the vehicle for free. Via our stadium sponsorship of Eastleigh FC, we support the Club to maintain its facilities for the local community and their after school football clubs and a disability football programme.

We invest in supporting the education of young people in the community by providing local colleges with free vehicles for training courses and offering shadowing opportunities with our dismantlers to automotive engineering students.

We sponsor Blue Lamp Trust, a registered charity which provides a free home safety and security survey for the vulnerable in the community, assessing the work needed to make their home safe and secure free of charge. And of course we love attending and supporting the regional community events such as the Curdridge Country Show and school fetes.

Green partnerships

We enjoy a number of green partnerships with key automotive organisations and agencies developing new ideas and improvements for the recycling industry. We recycle over 96% of every car we process at our Authorised Treatment Facility in Hampshire, and we are committed to actively reducing our carbon footprint in every area of the business.

National Salvage Association

An integrated approach for the disposal of salvage to some of the UK’s largest insurers since 2001.

The Environment Agency

We work to create better places for people and wildlife, and support sustainable development.

MVDA

VRA represents the interests of members to Government, other industry sectors, consumers, It provides advice & guidance to members, and encourages professionalism in order to give confidence to ‘consumers’ that its members are operating legally & that they meet certain standards.