The message comes from the House of Commons Trade and Industry Select Committee in a report published today.
The MPs on the committee also say that the onus is on vehicle manufacturers to make specific provision to pay for recycling and disposal of ELVs.
And, in the strongly worded report, the committee says it is alarmed that the DTI’s consultation paper did not address the issue of funding. “The question of who pays, and how much, is at the heart of any system of implementation of the Directive. We recommend that the DTI address the issue of funding, and make public their views, as a matter of some urgency.”
Funding relates strongly to whether or not shredder operators, such as EMR and SimsMetal, will be required to take back any vehicle and how they would be paid for the additional costs involved of meeting the requirements of the directive.
In a recent option 4 paper from the Society of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers and Traders the car industry wants the shredder firms to take ELVs back free of charge. Some payments would be made by the manufacturers but not necessarily to cover all the costs. Now the Select Committee warns that such a system could see cars being abandoned by the last owners, especially if they had to pay a fee to the shredder operator.
The costs relate to the extra processes that will be required before a car is shredded. The Select Committee says that that there is some consensus this will amount to around 40 per vehicle. “Assuming that ELV processors work to certain minimum standards such as removing and recycling tyres, batteries, fuel and engine lubricant, Charles Trent Ltd estimated that the current net cost of ELV processing is just under 2 per ELV. Charles Trent and the Motor Vehicle Dismantlers Association (MVDA) indicated that the cost of processing ELVs to Annex 1 standards would rise to almost 40 per vehicle. The SMMT told us that their research indicated that the typical cost per vehicle will be 45.”
The committee report continues: “Mr Mason of the British Metals Recycling Association also put the figure for depollution at around 40 per car: ‘that [depollution] is not done in the UK, and nobody would do it in the UK because it would make cars quite strongly negative value at the moment even if they are (currently) around about zero or slightly positive’.”
The committee says: “We urge the Government to clear up the uncertainty over the funding of the implementation of the Directive as soon as possible.”
The Select Committee report covers many issues. It explains that the Directive aims to minimise the impact of discarded motor vehicles on the environment and to ensure that the functioning of the internal market is not distorted by variations in disposal requirements.
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