CONFERENCE REPORT
65recyclinginternational.com | July/August | 2021
Changing landscape leaves car recyclers big shoes to fill
the evolution of the automotive sector presents new challenges
for established car recyclers. the gap between recyclers of cars
and batteries becomes smaller every day. With new legislation on
the horizon for both sectors, the question remains: what does the
future hold and how can ambitions be translated into reality?
Switzerland currently recycles around
150 000 end-of-life vehicles (ELVs)
every year. This represents 80-85% of
the discarded fleet. At the same time,
consumers buy around 300 000 cars,
25 000 vans and 4 000 heavy commer-
cial vehicles annually, reports
Foundation Auto Recycling
Switzerland. These cars reach an aver-
age age of 16 years.
Approximately 130 000 (not-too-bad-
ly) damaged cars are exported every
year for repair and second-life use.
The Swiss recycling chain comprises
around 70 dismantlers and seven large
shredder plants. The country’s second
biggest city, Geneva, was the back-
drop for the International Automobile
Recycling Congress (IARC) where del-
egates were eager to convene after
18 months of on-and-off-again lock-
downs.
A modern eLV directiVe
A big point of discussion was updat-
ing the EU’s ELV Directive which dates
back to 2000. The idea is to base the
regulation on a life-cycle approach ‘to
set the automotive sector on a circular
path’. The European Commission
plans to present a proposal to remove
the most polluting end-of-life vehicles
from EU roads by the end of next
year, Green Deal commissioner Frans
Timmermans has stated.
Another important objective of the
updated directive includes mandating
recycled content for certain plastic
components in new vehicles. The
amount of plastic and carbon fibre
used in cars has increased significantly
in recent years but recycling these
materials lags behind.
Trade organisation EuRIC is calling on
lawmakers to set a binding target for
post-consumer thermoplastics (poly-
mers that can be continually melted
and recast) in new cars of 25% by
2025, 30% by 2030 and 35% by 2035.
Meanwhile, the scope of the ELV
Directive may be extended to cover
other vehicles such as trucks and
motorcycles, Artemis Hatzi-Hull of the
EU’s DG for Environment tells dele-
gates. ‘Obviously, a lot has changed in
the last 21 years in terms of car
design, global trade rules and best
available recycling technology.’
‘Free trAde is good’
Hatzi-Hull notes that the EU also
wants to make sure that ‘old polluting
cars no longer circulate’ in other
regions of the world. ‘We are not
allowed to export hazardous waste
and end-of-life vehicles count as haz-
ardous waste,’ she points out. ‘I
believe that non-functional cars are
waste, not used cars. Therefore it’s
not fair to ship them off to third world
countries. If something becomes
waste in a specific country, I think it
should be treated there. Today, how-
ever, this is what’s happening. Let’s
prevent this in the future and not
close our eyes.’
In the words of Alejandro Navazas, a
scientific officer with EuRIC, these
vehicles are ‘zombie cars’. He esti-
mates that around four million of them
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