European legislation is pushing for 85% of the content of end-of-life vehicles to be recycled. EU countries are already on average recycling about three-quarters, but to maximize the recycling potential, investments on technologies and tighter enforcement are needed. The UK situation points to some of the obstacles.
 Metals, which make up roughly 75% of a car, have the largest recycling potential, and plastics comes next |
Automotives have been recycled for many years primarily because of the intrinsic value of the car’s metal content. While this is an important driving force, the reach of recycling has been limited, and significant quantities of scrap from end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) have still found their way into landfills.
Pressure over the last 25 years has been increasing to impose a minimum level on the amount of a vehicle that is recycled and to ensure that related recycling activity is undertaken in a sustainable manner. In Europe, this resulted in the development of a legislative tool - known as the ELV Directive - to address both of these issues.
Officially published in October 2000, the ELV Directive stipulates that, from January 2006, 80% of a vehicle must be retrieved for recycling while another 5% must be collected and used in energy-recovery processes. By 2015, these targets rise to 85% for recycling plus an additional 10% for energy recovery.
How is Europe responding to these targets? The opening of the section on ‘current status’ in an official report,1 published in November 2005, reads as follows:
‘Although most Member States have transposed the Directive and communicated their transpositions to the Commission, steps to achieve effective implementation are far from complete today, even though the first targets set for reuse, recycling and recovery are to be met not later than 1 January 2006.’
And the concluding point in this section states that:
‘Some of the new Member States may not, however, be able to develop their systems quickly enough to meet the 2006 targets on time.’
This suggests that Europe is struggling to improve on the status quo. By referring to the UK position, this article endeavours to explore some of the underlying issues.
How can we move up a gear?
It was generally accepted that 75% of a car was recycled already, a figure roughly equivalent to the general metal content of a car. These figures were proven by trials undertaken by the Sims Group on behalf of the UK Department of Trade and Industry. With this in mind, what steps are needed to increase the recycling rates to the levels sought by European legislation?
Presently, the UK Government gives a 1% allowance for fuel, while other fluids, tyres and battery from the vehicle take this additional figure up to approximately 5%. However, this means that there is still a 5% shortfall to the 85% threshold.
Apart from the metals, the next biggest constituent part of a vehicle is plastic, and this is the next targeted product. At the moment, there are no proven technologies to bridge that gap and so, consequently, companies are exploring their own ways to recover plastics. Interestingly, one of the few countries at the moment where the 85% minimum is being reached is the Netherlands, where historic taxes have meant that there is a national ‘fund’ to help subsidize the further recycling of vehicles. However, it will not be long before other countries reach the 85% level, without relying on the state subsidy of recycling - and the UK is leading that push for change.
Authorized treatment facilities
The new legislation has created a need for investment in the recycling process, purchasing bespoke equipment and setting up site infrastructure to achieve the requirements of a license for an authorized treatment facility.
Now, vehicles at the end of their lives have to be recycled via an authorized treatment facility (ATF). This means that in addition to dismantling an ELV, the plant must also remove hazardous residues before the car passes further down the recycling chain.
Once an ELV reaches an ATF, its battery is immediately taken out. The components that are then removed include tyres, all fluids including engine oil, gearbox oil, hydraulic oil in shock absorbers, fuel, anti-freeze and windscreen wash. Holes are drilled into the petrol pump, engine sump and gearbox to facilitate this, with oils being drained or sucked out of the vehicle.
In addition, lead balancing weights and any component with mercury content (which is used in some internal vehicle switches) are also removed. All of these products are then handled by an authorized trader for onward recycling and processing. In addition, other hazardous elements of the ELV are also dealt with at this point, including seat-belt pretensioners and air bags, which include explosive devices in them and have to be either safely removed or set off in the car in a controlled manner before the car goes for further reprocessing.
Therefore, there has been a need for significant investment at the ATF level. Specialist equipment needed includes shock absorber tools, liquid removal systems, machinery to detonate air bags safely, as well as specialist surfaces that will not absorb fluids. Therefore, as a society, we have moved a long way from just crushing cars. Yet, we still have a long way to go.
All part of the process
Once the ELV has been processed, it may then be crushed on site at the ATF, and afterwards taken to a large shredder facility (the UK has approximately 1200 ATFs and 37 shredders). Once crushed, most ELVs have to travel some distance on the back of a commercial vehicle to get to the shredder, and on from there for further processing. Consequently, it is more cost-effective for the ELV to be crushed into as small a size as possible, in order to make transportation as efficient as possible.
Once at the shredder, all of the ferrous metal and the ‘heavy fraction’ - the heavier waste products such as aluminium, copper and brass - are recovered. The heavy fraction is then sent to ‘dense media’ plants, of which there are four in the UK, for the recovery of non-ferrous metals. These non-ferrous metals are included in the 75% metal content already recovered from the vehicle.
 The recovery of scrap from vehicles needs to be done through authorized, experienced outlets |
The process is then left with the ‘light fraction’ - the plastics, fibre, internal carpets and other light materials from a vehicle. The light fraction would have gone to landfill; however, with the drive to reach the 85% target, there are increasing investigations on recovering this fraction in order to improve the recycling rates. Presently the recycling of light fraction and plastics from ELVs is not happening to any significant extent. However, intensive research in this area continues and breakthroughs, it is hoped, are round the corner.
Everything must go
The international trade in recycled products from a vehicle is huge. In terms of the ferrous metals, recycled material either stays in the UK or goes abroad, to as far afield as China and Taiwan. There is also a thriving scrap metals market from the UK to continental Europe, particularly to Spain. There are no issues with regard to the reuse of steel and fatigued metal - and the recycled metals from cars go through an arc furnace where it is turned into new, pure steel, before re-entering the system.
Indeed, there is more of a drive, environmentally, to add more electric arc furnaces to the steelmaking process. They are six times more environmentally friendly than conventional oxygen furnaces - so it pays twice for a car to be recycled and then to re-enter the manufacturing process, rather than steel being made from ‘new’.
Elsewhere, non-ferrous metals are joining their ferrous cousins on the international trade stage - and much of this export business from the UK is being done with China, particularly with regard to aluminium.
Other materials recycled from a car tend to be consumed domestically. For instance, tyres have a multitude of uses, including carpet underlay, retreaded or ‘remould’ tyres - and even in the construction of new, improved sea defences. However, the biggest user of old tyres is the cement industry, where they are used as a fuel in cement kilns. Indeed, the metal residue in a tyre, both radial and cross-ply, is a positive benefit to the kilns, where it might hamper the tyre’s prospective use in other applications.
Nevertheless, the domestic market is saturated with tyres (in the UK at least) - and recently the Landfill Regulations have aided the UK’s drive towards the recycling of old vehicle rubber. It has brought about a ban on the landfilling of shredded tyres, as well as whole tyres. This is a step forward - but unfortunately, the legislation does not provide an answer for the 60,000 tonnes of shredded tyres currently waiting to be recycled.
The one other main area of product left from the recycling of a car is waste oil. This is generally treated domestically, one example being recycled for use with industrial burners. However, this market needs to grow to cater for the increasing volume of waste oil, and therefore it is imperative for the system to recycle more of this increasingly expensive - and finite - fossil fuel.
The road blocks ahead
There are a number of obstacles to optimizing an ELV recycling system. One important aspect is the lack of public knowledge about how to dispose of their old cars correctly - see box below.
In addition, a major challenge in the UK is the lax vehicle-licensing system. It is still possible in the UK to sell a car for cash and accept at face value the name and address that the new owner gives. People can therefore purchase cars providing fictitious names, or giving someone else’s details. Consequently, this weakness in the system has allowed up to two million falsely registered cars to be on the UK’s roads. These vehicles are also not taxed, not insured, probably haven’t passed the Ministry of Transport’s vehicle safety test and possibly not safe. And there is no way to trace their ownership if they are illegally disposed of or scrapped.
Furthermore, the ELV Directive prescribes for the issuing of a Certificate of Destruction (CoD) when a vehicle is delivered by its last owner to an ATF to be scrapped. Only ATFs are allowed to issue such certificates. In the UK, however, the last owners of unwanted cars have no need to obtain a certificate because there is no penalty if they do not. Therefore, they have no incentive to deliver their vehicle to an ATF.
Who fought the law
While most law-abiding last owners will indeed ensure that this happens, the lack of a robust system actually encourages unscrupulous last owners (such as the two million anonymous ones) to take their unwanted cars to an illegal operator to be scrapped. Why is this? The answer is simple. An ATF has facilities to properly de-pollute vehicles and it has undertaken to assist the UK in achieving the prescribed recycling targets. These activities, however, come at a cost. The professional operator can rarely match the prices offered for ELVs by illegal operators who have no intention of incurring the cost of either de-polluting the vehicle or attempting to reach the recycling targets.
 An appropriate vehicle-licensing system can prevent unscrupulous owners from disposing of their cars illegally |
Everyone knows that illegal operators exist in the ELV sector. Yet, the UK’s Environment Agency has limited resources and support mechanisms to effectively control these people. Many of them treat environmental fines, which are generally small, as a business expense. If they are closed down by the EA, which can involve a lengthy process, there is nothing to stop them starting up again around the corner.
The only way that the ELV regulations can be made to work effectively is through the adoption of a robust licensing system that ensures every car is registered to its legitimate owner and that a financial penalty is applied to the last owner of the vehicle should they fail to obtain a CoD from an ATF.
All parties involved in the implementation of the ELV Directive continue to debate practical issues concerning its introduction. And in the UK, the supply chain, including central government, the vehicle manufacturers and the recycling industry, is now working together to enable it to take its place at the top of the responsible ELV-recycling nations table.
Note
1. Stakeholder Consultation on the Review of the 2015 - targets on reuse, recovery and recycling of end of life vehicles, Final Report, November 2005, available at http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/elv_index.htm
Derek Campbell is ELV and Business Development Manager at Sims Group UK Limited.
e-mail: dcampbell@uk.sims-group.com
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Informing the public
Encouraging more people to dispose of their cars in an environmentally friendly manner is something that everyone agrees is necessary. However, more can be done to tell the public about how to go about recycling vehicles that have come to the end of their lives.
In order to play its part in that learning process, the Sims Group has developed www.recycleyourcar.co.uk - a website that provides the public with information and access to their nearest ATF, as well as help with the process of how to deal with an ELV. All facilities listed on the site are approved by the UK Environment Agency and have to demonstrate strict adherence to the ELV legislation.
