Disposal disorder: automakers lead in recycling while the European Commission lags behind in writing end-of-life rules. But the whole industry wants to know who will pay for it - Cover Story

Automotive Industries,  August, 2002  by Anthony Lewis

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Confusion bordering on chaos just about sums up the current state of the auto industry over the European Commission's end-of-life vehicles (ELV) directive.

It is not the global automakers or suppliers who are to blame but the member states, each of whom is putting a different interpretation and timescale on what the EC has proposed.

The first key date was supposed to be July 2002. From then, manufacturers would become responsible for all new cars that are scrapped, regardless of their age or the location of their manufacturing headquarters. All OEMs who sell in Europe, even those with headquarters in North America or Asia, must recycle their own vehicles. If your new Ford you bought this month is wrecked in a crash next month, Ford would be responsible for its disposal.

There's just one problem--very few of the governments in the EC have yet drawn up the legislation.

From January 1, 2007, all carmakers will become responsible for the disposal of all vehicles, regardless of their age.

The directive says, in essence, that original equipment manufacturers are required to reclaim and recycle old cars and trucks. The directive is aimed at the prevention of waste disposal from vehicles by encouraging re-use, recycling and other forms of recovery of end-of-life vehicles and their components to protect the environment.

To put the size of the task in perspective, ACEA, the European association of car makers, estimates that about 11 million vehicles are de-registered, or taken out of service, each year of which about 7.3 million are "ELV treated."

The difference between 'de-registered' and 'ELV-treated' is explained by what ACEA describes as 'unknown treatment paths'--what you and I might call dumping or abandoning; there are also vehicles that are shredded without pre-treatment to remove toxic waste and recyclable materials and those that are 'illegally treated,' says ACEA.

At the moment, 75 percent of end-of-life vehicles are recycled, but that's easy because it's just the metal content. What the EC directive is aimed at is increasing the rate of reuse and recovery to 85 percent by average weight per vehicle by 2006 and to 95 percent by 2015. Parallel to that is a plan to increase recycling, as opposed to just recovery, to at least 80 percent and 85 percent. For older vehicles, produced before 1980, less stringent targets will be set.

For once, the industry is ahead of the legislators. Renault, for example, and its 13 key suppliers adopted what the company calls "life-cycle environmental management (LEM)" in 1999.

LEM makes allowances for the environmental impact of the product at all stages of its lifecycle from the extraction of raw materials to recycling of end-of-life products.

By last year, Renault had integrated 90 percent recyclable components in its Trafic mid-size panel van, Laguna II, Clio 2 and Vel Satis. Most other European car makers are close to that figure.

The industry is ready to recover and recycle and has been for some time. What it is worried about is not what should be done, nor even the timescale, but who should pay for it.

The concern is that companies which have seen their market share shrink in the early part of the 21st Century could be bankrupted by proposals to make them responsible for their historic car parc.

This would include MG Rover in the U.K. which has gone from being a volume car manufacturer to one producing less than 200,000 cars a year--and still falling.

What the industry is calling for is for European governments to decide how to make sure last owners of a vehicle will be motivated to take it to an authorized dismantler where it will be disposed of properly.

"The best efforts of the combined industries will be frustrated if we cannot ensure that vehicles reaching the end of their lives enter the correct disposal channels," says the U.K-based Automotive Consortium on Recycling and Disposal (ACORD).

Should last owners be rewarded if they take their scrapped vehicle to an approved dismantler, or punished if they don't?

At a conference in London earlier this year the consensus was that a cash incentive would be needed to make people take their cars to an authorized dismantler. The U.K'S Motor Vehicle Dismantlers' Association says that $75 should be given to people bringing in ELVs. By contrast, the plan in Germany is to introduce some sort of penalty system for drivers who fail to dispose of their vehicles properly--a penalty that would show up on their driving license.

The EC directive requires that systems are set up for the collection of ELVs and that there is "adequate availability."

Yet figures compiled by ACEA earlier this year show that countries like Greece have no officially approved shredder sites while Germany has 41, Italy 16, France 42 and the U.K. 37.

It is a contentious issue as some believe there should be only a few hundred approved sites in each country and others would prefer to see thousands of sites.

Sheila McKinley of the U.K.'S Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, admits it is a tricky balance.