What happens when a vehicle is scrapped?

How vehicles are recycled.

We’ve all been there: waving a tearful goodbye to our faithful steed as it makes its last journey, usually on the back of a scrappy’s flatbed. Even for those of us who keep our cars running for much longer than the average motorist, there comes a point when common sense makes fixing a car no longer economically viable, especially when scrap prices are pretty decent – around £130 per car at the time of writing.

You can always tell when scrap values are at their peak, because the market for sub-£500 cars tends to dry up, with many owners preferring to take the hassle-free option of calling up the local srapyard and coming away with cash in their pocket – or rather in their bank accounts, as cash-for-scrap is something the industry has been clamping down on. Throw in manufacturer-backed scrappage schemes and our breakers yards are busier than ever.

This is great news if you’re looking for cheap parts, but with so many scrapped cars passing through the system – just shy of two million in 2017 – the risk of environmental damage is huge. As is the danger of cars being dismantled or broken by unlicensed operators. In 2008, the DVLA introduced a new system to ensure that scrapped cars were indeed destroyed, ahead of the governmentbacked scrappage scheme that allowed owners a £2000 rebate against a new car purchase. As well as ensuring the rules of the scrappage scheme were upheld, the Certificate of Destruction (COD) system allowed the DVLA to more closely police the vehicle recycling industry and ensure that end-of-life vehicles (ELVS) were being dealt with in a proper manner.

The downside for enthusiasts was that, once a COD had been issued, that was that. A car could never see the road again, leading to an outcry over the vehicles being chopped in at main dealers, some of which were classics.

“Handling ELVS is a profitable business due to the value of the metal which can be recovered and from the resale of used parts,” says the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) in its 2018 Annual Sustainability Report. “Consequently, legitimate ATFS (Authorised Treatment Facilities) can face competition from illegal operators, which do not have permits and haven’t made the necessary investment to meet permit requirements.”

Increase in Cods

The Environment Agency has recently stepped up its enforcement efforts, which has seen a 25% increase in Cods issued in 2017 over the previous year. However, the definition of a ‘dismantler’ still seems vague: the legislation isn’t aimed at enthusiasts who are responsibly dismantling vehicles on their own driveway, but more at those who are stripping cars and disposing of the remains in a non-environmentally friendly manner. “This is currently the biggest problem facing the vehicle recycling industry,” says Chas Ambrose, secretary of the Vehicle Recyclers’ Association (VRA). “There are at least twice as many illegal vehicle recyclers in the UK as there are licensed. This is the same throughout the world because of the value of parts for reuse and of metal. All vehicle recyclers are legally required to have environmental permits issued by the Environment Agency. This is EU law under the End of Life Vehicles Directive. These licenses are expensive to obtain and to keep, yet illegal vehicle recyclers don’t have permits, don’t decontaminate vehicles, pollute the environment, deal in cash, encourage crime and undermine the businesses of permitted operators.

“In the past three years, the VRA has reported more than 1400 examples of illegal vehicle recyclers to the Environment Agency, but very little has been done and most continue to operate. We think there are at least 3000-4000 illegal vehicle recyclers in the UK, handling about 500,000 vehicles and generating £300 million every year, so it’s a lot of money. Most of these are openly selling online, where certain platforms allow their true identity to be hidden.”

When scrapping your car it’s essential to make sure it goes to an authorised facility, otherwise you won’t be issued with a COD. Without it, responsibility for that car remains with you, the registered keeper, and if it is found abandoned or causing a hazard to public health, then you could end up facing an unlimited fine. Be wary of anyone who advertises in local newspapers and on social media with statements such as ‘All DVLA paperwork dealt with’, as it’s often a ploy to get the full V5 from the owner and take advantage of their naivety. A list of Environment Agency licensed operators can be found at www.vrauk.org/ Properly licensed. aspx

The end of the line

Once you’ve found somewhere you know will handle your scrap car properly, what happens to your car as it begins the last stage of its life?

“In the UK, about 85% of a vehicle is now recycled and another 5-10% undergoes further ‘recovery’,” says Chas Ambrose. “About 99% of the metals are recycled and these are reused in a wide range of applications, not just vehicles. Metal recycling like this has been going on since vehicles were first invented. Metals account for about 75% of a vehicle by weight, so it’s a big industry.”

On its arrival at the ATF, the first stage of the scrappage process is ‘decontamination’. This is the removal of fluids from the car so they don’t contaminate any of the recyclable materials when the car is destroyed. Historically, many of these fluids became environmental waste, but recyclers have made huge strides in recent years to minimise their impact. Used engine oil, for example, often goes on to have a second life in items such as oil-filled radiators. If you’ve ever bought a fivelitre bottle of £1 screenwash from a wellknown High Street outlet, guess what? It has most likely been filled from a vat of the stuff at your local ATF, taken from the screenwash reservoirs of multiple scrapped cars. And there’s nothing wrong with that – it’s the circular economy doing it’s bit for the environment.

Next, the tyres are removed and assessed. The best ones can be sold as part-worns, while the rest are usually shredded and become the rubberised

surfaces for children’s playgrounds or gym equipment. Most car batteries are recycled, with their cases being cleaned and reused in budget batteries. Some ATFS test the batteries and, if appropriate, sell them on secondhand, though not all will do this. The airbag is then triggered and disposed of, as there’s no safe way to recycle the explosives.

The car is now generally evaluated, with all parts that are considered saleable being removed to feed back into the used parts industry. Many people mistakenly believe that it’s cheaper to buy used parts from a back-street breakers yard or on auction websites, but the truth is that there’s little variation in price. ATFS can’t afford to have parts taking up storage space for long, so they’re often a lot cheaper than you might imagine. For popular models, high-volume parts are sold off in bulk, either to marque specialists or companies that specialise in refurbishing expensive units such as brake servos, alternators and starter motors. Used engines are also in high demand, both as secondhand low-mileage units or complete heads and blocks for remanufacture.

Unpainted steel parts that aren’t any good, such as brake discs, worn gearboxes, depolluted engine blocks and exhaust systems, are dismantled and shredded. The shredded steel is sold to steel mills, which treat, melt and reuse the metal for lowergrade materials such as food and drink cans or bicycles. Good-quality shredded steel can even make a reappearance in a future car, once it has passed through quality control. The final remains of the car are then baled and compacted in order to lower transport costs.

More shredding

When you see compacted cars being transported down the motorway, this isn’t the end of their life by any stretch. They’re taken to non-vehicle metal recycling yards as raw materials, which are then fed into a shredder again. The pieces then pass down a conveyor system and the ferrous metal parts are sifted out using magnets. The remaining debris is useful, too, and can be used to produce new materials for many different applications.

The final three separated products are hard plastics, fibres and sand. The hard plastics come from the car dashboard and its other interior components. The fabric comes from the carpets and seat cushions. And the sand is paint particles, glass and other fine surfactants that have been broken down.

The hard plastics have a very good chance of being used once again in an automotive application. The door handle on your new Ford Focus, for example, could be made partly from the bumper of your old 1987 Escort, as high-quality plastics can be used again and again. The fabric fibres can be used in a variety of ways: roof insulation, cavity wall fillings, the fabric behind the headlining or soundproofing of a modern car, or the fillings of domestic furniture, not least because of their flame-retardant specification.

Which just leaves the sand. What can you possibly do with that? The answer is a load of poo, quite literally! Sewage plants buy it to put into their treatment facilities, where it is used to solidify the raw sewage and turn it into fertiliser – yet another stage in the circular economy, proving that everything, no matter how useless it may seem, has a purpose.

With such ingenuity in the recycling industry, are we now at a point where ELV recycling is the best it can ever be? Sadly not, says Chas Ambrose: “In recent years, it has got worse in many respects. The EU is currently reviewing this part of the ELV directive for this reason. Part of the reason is electric vehicle batteries – they are not yet reaching recyclers in large quantities (about 1900 in the UK in 2017) but the high-capacity batteries represent a significant fire and health and safety risk that the industry isn’t equipped to cope with.”