Who gives a scrap?

This story first appeared in the May issue of AutoTalk – CLICK HERE to download the magazine FREE

A mountain of scrap vehicles the size of the Melbourne Cricket Ground is generated hundreds of times every year.

The Auto Recyclers Association of Australia and Victorian Automobile Chamber of Commerce say the 800,000 vehicles sent to landfill in 2018 – which could fill the MCG 400 times and stretch nose-to-tail from Sydney to Auckland return – is a surmountable problem.

The VACC says the 1.2 million new vehicles, including motorcycles, bought by Australian consumers, businesses and governments in 2018 will push another million end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) out of circulation and into landfill by the end of 2019.

Chief executive Geoff Gwilym says there is a growing problem in the automotive industry with how the millions of tonnes of scrap material is disposed of.

“Embarrassingly, Australia currently does not have a national policy dealing with ELVs,” he says.

“This lack of policy leaves the auto recycling sector vulnerable to environmental breaches and rogue traders,” Gwilym explains.

VACC communications manager David Dowsey says accredited automotive recyclers are doing their best but can’t do it all.

“Accredited automotive recyclers do keep as much scrap from going to landfill as possible by keeping as much material as their lots can hold, and on-selling parts to give them a second or even a third life,” he says.

“But eventually that remaining vehicle carcass – those parts that are not recycled – has to go somewhere and the fact we don’t have a national end-of-life vehicle disposal policy in place to monetise and repurpose those 800,000 vehicles in scrap yards is a lost opportunity for the industry, and ecologically irresponsible,” Dowsey explains.

ARAA executive director David Nolan tells AutoTalk the auto salvage and recycling problem is an extension of Australia’s broader and widely-publicised waste management crisis.

“Out of about 2000 auto recycling businesses, 300-400 are doing the right thing, paying tax, meeting compliance standards, employing people and operating their business responsibly,” he says.

“But these large compliant businesses are the ones at the scrutiny of regulators, and the small, rogue operators flouting the rules are hard for regulators to deal with,” Nolan explains.

According to Nolan, roughly 60% of end-of-life vehicles go through a “shredding” process, which separates a vehicle’s metal components from the glass, rubber, plastic and other non-metallic materials.

But he and the VACC says there is between 200,000-300,000 tonnes of that non-metallic material going from the shredder to landfill, including 65,000 tonnes of unrecyclable vehicle material going directly into Victorian landfill each year.

Nolan says Australia is well behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to automotive waste regulation.

“Compared with Japan, China, Europe and the US, Australia’s regulatory system for vehicle recycling is totally inadequate,” Nolan reveals.

“Automotive waste has a significant environmental impact because vehicles are highly intensive of material resources,” he continues.

Nolan says a wide range of various types of metals, as well as other non-metallic materials, go into making a vehicle, which then can either go back into the ground, or stay in circulation.

The politics, he notes, is not producing a result.

“At an industry level it’s a significant problem, but at a federal level it isn’t; the waste management problem as far as a federal government approach is concerned is to operate locally through councils and states, but the automotive problem always falls shy of attention,” he says.

“It’s too hard for local government to regulate on its own, the state-based EPA does what it can, but the federal government needs to step in and take control of the nation’s automotive waste problem,” Nolan warns.

According to the China End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) and Dismantling Industry Report, 2018-2022, Chinese vehicle ownership increased by more than 15% from 2010 to 2017 and is predicted to continue for another five years, reaching 313.1 million vehicles under ownership by 2022 – which all have a life cycle of their own.

But the same problem emerges, albeit on a much larger scale.
The report indicates 1.469 million ELVs were recycled in China from January-November, 2018 – an increase of 15% over the same period in 2017.
But the full-year recycling rate is only as high as 20%.

China boasts an ELV scrap rate which remains far lower than the level of 6% to8% in the developed countries, plus as many as 700 car dismantling firms, many considered small against the likes of Shenzhen GEM High-Tech which employs over 3000 people or Henan Yuguang Gold & Lead smelter and recycler with over 3500 staff.

The Chinese government offers an incentive scheme, paying subsidies directly to vehicle owners, which means professional dismantling firms buy cars at a low price due to weak profitability, but causing “an influx of scrapped cars to the black market … [at] a higher price”.

According to Japan for Sustainability (JFS), it ranks in the top 10 for car ownership courtesy of the ownership rate of one car per 1.7 people.

Stats Japan cites nearly 127 million people, and nearly 69 million registered cars (forgetting the 69.1 million bicycles), making end-of-life vehicles a problem for the island nation as well.

JFS says roughly 55% of parts by weight are not immediately reusable, such as “some engine components as well as catalysts, non-ferrous metals, and tyres”, but as much as “80% of parts [by weight] per vehicle are reused or recycled”.

Nolan highlights the inadequacy of Australian EPA regulations which allow fluids and gases such as refrigerants like the R-134a hydroflurocarbon, which contributes to global warming, as non-recyclable.
However, Japan has had regulations in place since 2002 which stipulate it can and must be recycled.

The Law Concerning the Recovery and Destruction of Fluorocarbons forces Japan’s automotive dismantling industry to ensure “fluorocarbons used for car air-conditioners be recovered,” JFS says.

Industrial landfill sites are near capacity in Japan, where 25% of ELVs put through shredding were once typically sent to landfill, but the increase in disposal fees and drop in steel prices risks an illegal dumping trend.

Automakers in Japan are required by law to remove and recycle fluorocarbons, airbags and ASR from the vehicles they manufacture or import; fluorocarbons must simply be destroyed.
Those manufacturers also pay collection fees at the end of this process.

Tyre Stewardship Australia says the national fleet, which the Australian Bureau of Statistics reports consisted of 19.2 million registered motor vehicles as of January 31, 2018, is putting 56 million used tyres into the waste management system every year.

A 550-metre Pakenham horse track in Victoria has used a product called Equine Air which consists of approximately 3000 passenger car tyres – just 27 tonnes worth – and it’s just one of 29 other projects TSA has under way.

Nolan says we’re lucky if 250,000 end-of-life vehicles were de-polluted of oil, petrol, brake fluids, coolant, lead, hexavalent chromium, mercury and plastic compounds in an environmentally appropriate manner.

“We are simply shredding the vehicles,” he says
“All of the shredder residue, which contains all of those [harmful] elements … ends up in landfill.”

“Australia seriously lags the rest of the industrialised world in managing its vehicle waste,” he adds.

Auto Recyclers Association of Australia wants to see national recognition of certified automotive recyclers.