International Review of Waste Management Policy - Department of ...

policies are directly driving this R&D. GHK, and Bio Intelligence Service proposes that
Member States might consider banning ASR from landfill in order to further send a
signal to the industry and speed up R&D. 521
In the EU the ELV Directive includes a coding standards obligation whereby the
producers must, in concert with material and equipment manufacturers, use the
nomenclature of ISO component and material coding standards for the labeling and
identification of components and materials of vehicles, and in Korea, for example, a
Recycling Information Network has been set up to make it easier for dismantlers to
identify the parts of the vehicle that can be either reused or recycled.
This is most relevant to plastics that are difficult to separate due to the wide variety of
polymer types. Kvist also indicates that to achieve the high recycling rates designs
should be modified to include materials codings to ease identification of parts
(especially plastics) and to avoid risk substances. 522
GHK, and Bio Intelligence Service points out that there is a strong dialogue between
producers, dismantlers and automotive shedding facilities in relation to what
components or materials are causing issues in the recovery and shredding processes.
For example, some adhesives that affix textiles and plastic components to the vehicle
body cause problems when it comes to separating materials from the ASR. Therefore
tests are being performed as to what adhesive will meet the standards of the
producers, but also enable the highest capture rates of materials from the ASR.
Finally, in Sweden, where the population density is low, there were some problems
with illegal dumping because people were unwilling to transport their vehicles to an
ATF. So to continue to increase their recycling and recovery rates, mobile depollution
and dismantling units have been developed to travel around the country to capture
vehicles that may otherwise have been dumped.
23.8 Social and Distributional Consequences
There are not thought to be any distributional consequences as the Directive applies
to a wide range of vehicles. The policy may in fact help to alleviate distributional
issues where, without producer responsibility, the cost of disposal previously fell to
the final owner of vehicles – individuals who (by nature of owning lower priced cars)
might be expected to be less able to afford disposal fees, and hence were more likely
to abandon them illegally.
In addition, in many countries (including the UK) the incidence of car ownership is low
in the poorest sections of society. Hence, even if it was the case that some costs had
to be born by the final owners, the very poorest sectors of society might not be heavily
521 GHK and Bio Intelligence Service (2006) A study to examine the benefits of the End of Life Vehicles
Directive and the costs and benefits of a revision of the 2015 targets for recycling, re-use and recovery
under the ELV Directive, Final Report to DG Environment, May 2006,
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/pdf/study/final_report.pdf
522 K. Kvist (2006) Car Recycling and Producer Responsibility – Sweden, Accessed 15 th October 2008,
http://www3.gov.ab.ca/env/waste/eprw/pubs/Karin_Kvist.pdf
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