The Auto Recyclers Association of Australia (ARAA) and Victorian Automobile Chamber of Commerce (VACC) have stated that there were 800,000 vehicles sent to landfill in 2018, but the problem is surmountable.

The VACC says the 1.2 million new vehicles purchased by Australian consumers, businesses and governments in 2018 will result in another million end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) going to landfill by the end of 2019.

VACC Chief Executive, Geoff Gwilym says there is a growing problem in the automotive industry around ELVs and the millions of tonnes of scrap material being 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.

ARAA executive director David Nolan told AutoTalk the vehicle salvage and recycling problem is an extension of Australia’s broader and widely-publicised waste management crisis. He said that from approx 2,000 auto recycling businesses, about 300-400 are doing the right thing, paying tax, meeting compliance standards, employing people and operating their business responsibly.”

“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.

Nolan says approximately 60 per cent of ELVs go through a “shredding” process, separating a vehicle’s metal parts from the glass, rubber, plastic and other non-metallic materials. However ARAA and VACC say between 200,000-300,000 tonnes of that non-metallic material is going to landfill. Nolan says Australia is well behind the rest of the first world for automotive waste regulation.

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

“Automotive waste has a significant environmental impact because vehicles are highly intensive of material resources and a wide range of various types of metals, as well as other non-metallic materials, go into making a vehicle.

“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,” Nolan adds.

Source: http://autotalk.com.au/industry-news/automotive-waste-grand-final-sized-problem

26 April 2019