20 Mar 07
The myth here is that the oil-smeared, rust-riven heaps that populate eBay are Satan's own dirty bombs. Not necessarily so. Soon they will die and a car that dies in the UK is heading to a greener place.
New laws state that every post-1980 car sent to the scrapyard must be 85% recycled. That means all fluids drained, tyres and batteries removed, the parts sold on or shredded with the rest of the hulk. The service is guaranteed free, and could even be worth a few quid.
Pretty much all manufacturers have signed up with one of two 'authorised treatment facility' networks, Autogreen and Cartakeback. They have to do that, because the company that makes the car is responsible for its final journey. Right now, they don't pay anything because the scrap merchants are making good money with scrap iron at £80 or so a tonne - not bad when you think an estimated two and a half million vehicles are scrapped every year. If that price ever drops, the car companies will have to cover the difference.
There are two levels of recycling: one, the wholesale crushing and baling of cars and two, dismantling. The cubed bales are shredded, separated and exported, mainly to China. More likely to save on CO2 emissions is the dismantling route, whereby parts are removed and sold on to patch up existing runners, which saves the energy needed to fabricate a whole new bumper, for instance. Around 90% of Autogreen's 150-strong network are in the dismantling business.
If you buy a car with valuable parts, then its chances of being a donor after its death are much higher - think Golf GTI Mk1, for example. A Daihatsu Fourtrak in a farming area would similarly be stripped, or a BMW 3-Series in London.
