Features

The EU end-of-life vehicles (ELV) directive is “largely failing”in its environmental objectives, according to a report to the European Commission drafted by the European Environment Bureau in Belgium. It also warns that a higher recycling target due to enter force in 2015 is unachievable and calls for it to be relaxed.

The report was drawn up as input to a review of the 2015 recovery and recycling targets required under the directive by the end of this year. Representatives of waste management companies, car manufacturers, member states and NGOs were included in the stakeholder group responsible.

The report’s first conclusion, is that the whole directive is being undermined by a failure to ensure scrap cars reach certified treatment facilities. Fully half instead go through unauthorised channels or are dumped illegally, it states.

The directive sets targets for how much of individual cars should be recovered and recycled, the first of which bite next year. If half of cars are being lost from the system then even if these targets are met the directive“will have only half the effect intended”, the report says.

On the 2015 targets, the report’s main conclusion is that a lack of markets and “negative costs” are currently “insurmountable barriers” to progress. The key problem it states, is finding profitable outlets for the non-metallic fraction of scrap vehicles.

The directive requires an 85 per cent recycling rate per vehicle from 2015,up from 80 per cent from 2006. Achieving it would require as much as half of the non-metallic fraction to find markets, the report concludes. This “is unlikely based on today’s market realities”. It suggests abandoning the target or postponing it until 2020. Some experts are however of the opinion that EU member states still have plenty of scope to increase recycling rates over the next ten years and to meet the target.