Boeing engineers and members of the media watched a giant excavator’s claw tear apart the ecoDemonstrator 757 September 2, 2015 in Moses Lake, Wash.

Boeing participated to better understand what happens at the end of an airplane’s service. Engineers also were studying more efficient recycling techniques and determining how to extract the most value from the materials and parts on future airplanes.

The ecoDemonstrator 757 landed in Moses Lake for the last time in July 2015 after finishing a four-month flight-test program. Since then, disassembler Aircraft Demolition has been pulling valuable parts off the airplane and selling them for the aircraft owner, Stifel Bank. Valuable components like landing gear, avionics, lavatories and ducts get overhauled, re-certified and returned to service. High-value metals and material parts also are removed.