Examination of Witnesses (Questions 700-719)
Mr Steve Franklin, Mr Jerry Hardcastle and Mr Peter
Stokes
1 APRIL 2008
Q700 Lord Howie of Troon: I want
to ask you about something else, I want to ask you about RFID
tags, and I would like you for the record to explain to us just
what they are and to what extent they are used to aid the disassembly
and sorting of materials at the end of life?
Mr Stokes: That is a radio frequency identity
tag and you can basically think of it as an electronic key. It
is a bit like if you have got a dog you can have one of these
injected in your dog so it can be identified with a scanner later
on. There was a proposal at some point that components on a vehicle
would have an RFID tag embedded and this would allow people to
identify particular components, dismantle those, box them up and
ship them off for processing.
Q701 Lord Howie of Troon: Does it
work?
Mr Stokes: It is not used as far as I am aware.
Q702 Lord Howie of Troon: That is
a very good answer.
Mr Stokes: One of the reasons it is not used
is—we touched on the point earlier—that a vehicle
actually is not hand-dismantled, it is actually just crushed and
stripped into its component materials and then those are recovered
later, so there is no drive to actually do that at the front end.
The second point to bring to bear is that the directive forces
manufacturers to label all the plastic components on the vehicle
with the material composition and the material type, so if you
took the plastic bumper off you could actually identify whether
it was polypropylene or whatever the material was that it was
manufactured from.
Q703 Lord Howie of Troon: That is
very good.
Mr Stokes: Building onto that, manufacturers
also produce an international dismantling information system which
gives exploded diagrams of the models and again details the material
that components are made of on that particular vehicle so the
directive wraps most of that up.
Q704 Lord Howie of Troon: I suppose
this crushing process means that you are unable to reprocess or
reuse such items as the car radio.
Mr Stokes: If there were any value in reusing
the car radio that probably would be taken out at the scrap yard
and if they thought there was a market for any of those parts
then they would take them out and try to sell them.
Q705 Lord Howie of Troon: But there
is not a market, is there?
Mr Stokes: For some vehicles there is and there
are people out in the trade there who make a very good living
on the sale of those parts.
Q706 Baroness Sharp of Guildford:
To some extent we have already covered the question I was going
to ask about plastics recycling. The Plastics Reprocessing Validation
Exercise demonstrated that recyclate plastic could be recycled
into specified engineering grade plastics which could be used
in components. We have already discussed to some extent the limitations
on that: what is the proportion these days of recycled plastic
being used in vehicles; do we have a figure for that?
Mr Hardcastle: We estimate about five per cent
of the vehicle weight is recycled plastic.
Q707 Baroness Sharp of Guildford:
And the prime plastic or unrecycled plastic?
Mr Hardcastle: Probably two or three times that
is virgin plastic; for the reasons I explained we are still having
to buy the virgin material.
Q708 Baroness Sharp of Guildford:
Yes. From the answer that Mr Stokes gave I take it that this international
dismantling information system is actually being used and is helpful,
is it?
Mr Stokes: It is available but whether people
are actually using it or not is uncertain—bearing in mind
that the end process tends to drive the system and there is less
desire to take the vehicles apart then it tends to be used to
more identify where hazardous materials are within vehicles that
need to be removed rather than where can I find nylon within the
vehicle, for example, and how do I extract that nylon from the
vehicle, because it just is not done in that way.
Mr Hardcastle: As was pointed out, it is difficult
to take the parts off, so this door trim that I talked about is
100 per cent polypropylene. All of the parts in a car that are
polypropylene are recyclable, but it ends up in the shredder and
the shredder is clearly not reading that. But the fact is if you
put 100 per cent polypropylene in with the steel and the aluminium
it makes it easier to then recycle, so the label itself at the
moment is not necessarily so useful at the end of life. However,
somebody earlier asked what about collecting used parts, and we
did have a system in Germany where we could collect bumpers from
vehicles and then if you can look at the bumpers and each one
of them is labelled then we have a sure way of recycling that
material.
Q709 Baroness Sharp of Guildford:
I guess there is a fair amount of bumper plastic to be recycled
around. Picking up on this business of shredding, evidence we
received from Ford suggested that the advanced post-shredder treatment
allows virtually all materials to be recycled and recovered. Is
this actually the case and what incentives are there for manufacturers
to invest in these technologies and to what extent do manufacturers
actually conduct research in this?
Mr Franklin: As you know, the ELV legislation
says that we have got to recover up to 95 per cent and recycle
up to 85 per cent by 2015. For 2006 in the UK manufacturers have
met their target—BERR have analysed the results coming through
and we have achieved 80 per cent recycling. Predominantly this
is via the shredder but with post-shredder technologies. We do
see that it is going to be very difficult to get to 85 per cent
or 95 per cent recovery and we do have concerns that it may be
using far more energy than is really good for it when really what
we should be concentrating on is the in-use phase as the most
important part of the environmental footprint of the vehicle,
not the end-of-life stage. We do not really want to be recycling
things just for recycling's sake, but currently the shredding
companies are looking at investing and the UK's largest shredding
company has teamed up with an American company to recycle plastics.
There are some concerns about the REACH legislation and how that
affects recycling, so there are some unknowns and we do have some
concerns in that area.
Mr Stokes: It is fair to point out that at that
post-shredder separation stage there has not actually been any
recycling, all there has been is a refining of the different materials
into different levels of purity and then you need to find end
markets for those to pull those through and actually have those
recycled. Without wishing to sound like a Volkswagen advert we
worked with a company called Sicon in Germany and patented a series
of designs which takes today's measure of separation and really
moves that several stages on to the level where we are pretty
confident we can hit the 95 per cent target economically in 2015.
I do not know what sort of economics we will have in 2015 but
it is looking viable today and that technology is rolling out
in different countries across Europe, because we need to get that
in and working in advance of 2015, not just try and make it work
in 2015.
Q710 Baroness Sharp of Guildford:
Are you under greater pressure in countries like Germany than
you are in the UK to achieve these levels?
Mr Stokes: No, the directive casts its net right
across the whole of the EU 27, and our company took the view that
we are the ultimate financial backstop as a responsible producer,
that if we could do something which would leverage those costs
down at the post-separation stage, then it was actually worth
that investment at the front to save ourselves and give ourselves
some economic certainty.
Mr Franklin: In fact the UK is probably at the
forefront, we are under more pressure because we are the only
country in Europe that has got right-hand drive, so we are actually
treating our vehicles whereas a lot of the others are going further
east, so you do not see the big numbers in the other Member States
at the moment. One of the other concerns we have on that recycling,
the VW-Sicon process that Peter mentioned, is that the second
reading of the Waste Framework Directive takes place this week
and recycling as a definition is a big concern to us. The Commission
proposal we are very happy with, that would allow for that VW-Sicon
process, but the amendments proposed probably stop it so any investment
which we really need to do now to get to all these forthcoming
targets is stalled because of this rather narrow definition of
recycling.
Q711 Lord Haskel: What are the commercial
arrangements regarding the recycling? You give us the impression
that you are the companies that do the recycling; is that so or
do you have sub-contractors and so are you really dependent on
the efficiency of the sub-contractors?
Mr Stokes: You are absolutely right. The manufacturers
do sub-contract, it is not a core competence that we have. Our
role within the UK implementation was to organise that we had
net-backs and take-back points and that these things had enough
density so that people could take back their end-of-life vehicles
free of charge. Where those vehicles are brought to us, then we
have the responsibility to ensure that our contractor then goes
on to meet our obligation of the 85 per cent target. You are absolutely
right, we do not do the recycling but we are managing that if
you like through our contractors.
Q712 Lord Haskel: Are you finding
that there are enough recyclers appearing and that they are technically
competent, able and efficient?
Mr Stokes: Yes, there are. There are still an
awful lot out there that are operating unlicensed and outside
the regulations, which is problematic for us, we would like to
see that regulated more strongly so that more of the vehicles
come into what we would call legitimate contracted and uncontracted
networks, but if we look back and see where we were five years
ago the landscape has changed dramatically. There were fears that
the regulations would impose massive costs on recyclers and that
people would throw their hat in the air and not continue in the
business and that we might only have 300 or 400 operators. Across
the United Kingdom we are around 1400 now, Steve.
Mr Franklin: It is approaching 1400.
Mr Stokes: Those are officially licensed sites
and you have then got a grey network behind that that is also
dabbling in the business because of the value of the materials
involved.
Q713 Chairman: Before we move on,
Mr Stokes, could you perhaps send us a note about the VW-Sicon
arrangement and particularly the technologies that have been developed
in that area because it is something which has not appeared on
our radar screens so far.
Mr Stokes: We have not done a very good job
on communication then.
Q714 Lord Crickhowell: If we could
move on I want to display my ignorance about something you have
just been telling us and then really follow up Lord Haskel's question.
I confess I do not know enough about the End-of-Life Vehicle Directive
and how it actually works. You talk about these great percentages
and how you achieve them but I am not clear, and I probably ought
to be, about what the arrangements are for making sure that these
things do happen. We have talked about some parts of the industry
simply moving stuff on and one of the features, I am sorry to
say as a Welshman, of my fellow countrymen and particularly farmers
is that they like to leave their cars in fields, having just dumped
them there when they come to the end of life, some of them in
very large numbers, which causes a problem for organisations like
the National Parks, and all over the countryside I am afraid you
will see cars or what were cars once upon a time. What are the
powers and what are the regulatory effects, how do you actually
get the percentages, how do you get people to do it? I am not
clear how the regulation works.
Mr Franklin: I mentioned the DVLA earlier on
and they should be the driver in demanding a COD and that should
get you out of continuous taxation, so every last owner should
need to know that they need to take their car to an authorised
treatment centre where it will be treated and taken in free of
charge by the manufacturer's sub-contractors.
Q715 Lord Crickhowell: Does that
not happen?
Mr Franklin: It is happening but there is not
the driver for it, the DVLA has not created that driver that we
really need, so it is happening but it is happening in lower numbers
than we would have expected and would have hoped for. After that,
as you may know, the legislation says that 85 per cent of last
owners need to be within ten miles of an ATF and no one must travel
more than 30 miles, and Peter spent a wonderful time up in the
Shetland Islands last week.
Mr Stokes: I was going to say the problems that
you have in Wales are equally apparent up in the Shetland Islands
as well. We went up to inspect two facilities that we have got
there, our two northernmost facilities.
Mr Franklin: Every last owner has the opportunity
to take his car back free of charge to an authorised treatment
facility.
Q716 Lord Crickhowell: The opportunity,
but no compulsion.
Mr Franklin: If he is not going to tax it then
obviously there is a penalty for not taxing your car and that
should be followed up.
Q717 Lord Methuen: Can I interrupt
there, surely if he has put a SORN (statutory off road notification)
in then his obligation to tax disappears.
Mr Franklin: That would be the alternative,
yes. He would need to SORN it.
Q718 Lord Methuen: If he has done
a SORN then he can leave it in his field and let it rust.
Mr Franklin: He could do that, yes.
Chairman: Interesting though this is we must
try and make progress, colleagues; could we try and get to the
next question. Lady Platt.
Q719 Baroness Platt of Writtle: Ford
has reported that the greatest environmental impact of a vehicle's
life occurs during the use phase and so a focus on dismantling
and recycling at the end of life will only have a limited benefit.
Instead it recommends that more attention should be paid to the
post-shredder treatments and that the disposal of shredder residue
in landfill should be restricted. We have covered this a bit;
do you agree with this statement and should regulation be used
or changed to encourage such a shift in approach?
Mr Franklin: We have a European organisation
and we talked to the Commission about our forthcoming targets.
One of the recommendations we said is that if landfill is less
available—and of course it is becoming less available—then
alternative post-shredder technology is much more viable. Do we
need to do more in terms of legislation? Probably not: we have
got the landfill tax escalator, we have got the landfill directive
which is already restricting what can go to landfill and how it
has got to be treated, so this transition is taking place, that
landfill is becoming less available and post-shredder technology
is becoming more viable.
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