To ensure the metals are removed, tough monitoring of vehicle depollution to check shock absorbers, bulbs and other items are removed from ELVs is being recommended.
Published today, Heavy Metals in Vehicles II by experts at Germany's Okopol Institute of Ecology and Politics, looks at Directive 2000/53/EC on End-of-Life Vehicles. The report also comes only a week before the Department of Trade and Industry is due to issue a consultation paper on how the UK will implement the ELV directive.
The directive aims at the prevention of wastes from vehicles and at the reuse, recycling and other forms of recovery so as to reduce the disposal of waste, while at the same time improving the environmental performance of all of the economic operators involved.
The report says that specifically, Article 4 (1) of the Directive states that “in order to promote the prevention of waste Member States shall encourage, in particular, (a) vehicle manufacturers, in liaison with material and equipment manufacturers, to limit the use of hazardous substances in vehicles and to reduce them as far as possible from the conception of the vehicle onwards, so as to in particular prevent their release into the environment, make recycling easier, and avoid the need to dispose of hazardous waste….”
The main results of the study presented herewith show that Article 4(2)(a) of the ELV Directive has “indeed highlighted an area where significant improvements with respect to reduced use of hazardous substances can be achieved, thus leading to an improved recyclability of vehicles and a better environmental performance in the recycling sectors, as well as resulting in cleanerwaste to be disposed of. Many of today’s applications of the problematic substances can in fact be avoided or substituted, even if this may require a certain period of time in some cases.”
Shredder residue
One of the main aims of the ELV directive is to reduce the contamination of shredder wastes from car recycling, in order to render them in a condition in which they can be more easily recycled or recovered without posing harm to the environment, or to render them less harmful if disposed of in landfills.
In the shredding operation, three material fractions are normally generated, i.e. the ferrous scrap fraction, the shredder light fraction (SLF) and the (non-ferrous metal) heavy fraction (SHF). The arising amounts and proportions between the different fractions depend on the specific design of the car, but also on the design and the specific process parameters of the shredder installation.
The researchers say that none of the three fractions contains pure material, but rather each of them is a material mixture of ferrous and non-ferrous metals, plastics and others.
They suggest the shredder light fraction (SLF) and the non-metallic fraction of the heavy fraction (SHF) are further considered as shredder wastes and calculate that these add up to 300 kilograms from one vehicle. This is signifcant because shredder wastes from end of life vehicles make up 10% of all hazardous wastes generated annually in Europe.
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