Morley set for crisis talks over shredder residue

The crisis meeting with environment minister Elliot Morley will be held on Monday afternoon in order to try and thrash out a solution to the problem of whether of not shredder residue (waste material from car recycling) is hazardous or not.

Currently landfill operators cannot accept the material in non-hazardous sites unless it is certified non-hazardous. Tests to do this, claimed Neil Marshall, director general of the British Metals Recycling Association, do not exist.
Mr Marshall warned that if the situation isn't resolved “there will be 45,000 end of life cars on the streets every week. This will make fridge mountains look like Legoland.”

Depolluted

Mr Marshall said that he was not looking for a short term fix: “This will not help us at all.” What is needed, he said, “is for the government to recognise that the ELV regulations say that a depolluted vehicle is not hazardous and so the waste does not need to be tested.”

He said that at the meeting “the industry's case will be put forcefully. We expect that Government will acknowledge that they have to urgently resolve this problem and that they will come up with a long term solution.” Mr Marshall added: “Hopefully the disruption to our marketplace will be short-lived.”

A spokesman for Sims Recycling, the UK's second largest metal recycler confirmed that the company is halting its shredders. “We literally cannot run the shredders as the legislation stands as there will be nowhere to take the residue.”

A spokeswoman for European Metal Recycling said: “This decision has been forced on us by a change in the law and the lack of any adequate testing regime. These issues need to be resolved immediately.”

Manufacturers

Observers have commented that there are a number of related factors to the controversy, including that some 850,000 tonnes of shredder residue have been disposed of at standard landfill prices in the past. Another expert remarked that if the material is defined as hazardous there will be a knock-on effect for car manufacturers who could find their costs under producer responsibility for ELVs increase dramatically.

One large local authority told letsrecycle.comthat they were very concerned about the situation and feared storage sites in the authority could quickly become swamped by end-of-life vehicles.