I read that it could now cost £300 to dispose of a scrap car under the EU End-of-Life Vehicle Directive.
Not content with causing the littering of our countryside with old fridges by trying to solve a "problem" which does not exist, they now want up to 85% of old cars to be re-cycled.
Wonder how much power that will take? They say the last owner could pay or perhaps a further tax on new cars would be levied.
They are also proposing similar schemes for toasters, T.Vs , computers, cuddly toys etc. etc. by 2006
Growler, how can I move to the Phillipines? Sounds like Heaven compared to this asylum.
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I think the idea is that a levy is charged when the car is first purchased as new. This levy then passes to the subsequent owners until the final owner decides to scrap it and he uses this levy to get a scrap merchant to take the car away. The scrap man takes the car away and applies for the levy which is his payment.
Fairly simple, will only apply to cars sold with the levy and will stop people dumping their old cars on the side of roads.
Jonathan
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85 % of cars recycled.......
Might be a case of attempting to get the manufacturers to make the cars easier to work on, encouraging bangernomics by reducing tax / insurance on older cars therefore cars are recycled via breakers yards.
Rally teams modify cars to ensure that they can replace major components quickly and easily, why oh why can't OEM's do this as a matter of course?
Yes Mr Vauxhall, true to your silly beardy adds you have taken all the spare room out of the engine bay of your Vectra however its murder to work on (scraped knuckles today from replacing bloody headlight bulb)
I will not hold my breath.
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I think they deliberately designed out from the Vectra all the DIY mechanic friendliness of the Cavalier, the clutch change used to be very simple (apart from the V6's and 4x4's I think) but not so on the Vectra. Mind you, to replace the offside headlight bulb you had to remove the airbox or risk losing the bulb retaining clip somewhere inside the front of the car, so maybe some things don't change!
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Report say's although the rules come into force in April, it has not yet been decided how and on whom the charge will be levied.
Could be the poor chap left holding the 10 year old Volvo.........Me.
(2 Actually, and a Sierra shopping car)
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The current level for recycling of ELV is 75%, and as you say Alwyn the balance has to be increased to 80% by mass in 2006, and 85% by mass in 2015. I think the cost is because with scrap prices so low it is difficult to deal with the ELV at a profit.
This means that the 9,560,000 tonnes of shredder residue annually produced is now being examined.
If you look at this waste stream 13% of this material currently being land filled is readily recoverable metal, and this would take us quite some way towards the 80% overall figure.
The next stage is to consider the method by which the remaining material could be dealt with, pyrolysis and gasification technologies are probably the favourite methods coupled with heat recovery, steam and power generation. This brings the overall recycling concept well above the 85% figure and is more environmentally friendly than landfill.
The problem is that the UK Government *in particular* gives no guidance and help in establishing true production scale plants in order to deal with the problem of turning these well established techniques into real demonstration full scale plants so that companies can have confidence the technique will work outside the laboratory.
Sometimes I despair about the lack of joined up thinking this New Labour outfit shows. I recently found out about the following ruling just as an example, off topic I know but relevant to this thread.
UK Govt has decreed that horse manure is a completely acceptable fuel for combustion in a biomass fuelled power generation boiler, and that a specific "industrial" waste is not acceptable. Well that's OK you might think, except that you find out the second waste is classed as industrial because it is produced by various commercial premises.........which are race horse stables.
What is the word I am trying to remember?........ oh yes DOH!
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Race horse s*** probably burns a lot faster and hotter requiring exotic and prohibitivly expensive materials to be used in the combustion chambers. The politicians are probably now dreaming up some costly plan for safe disposal of rocking horse s***.
Piers
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Horse ****? Considering the amount of it prevalent in Westminster, maybe that should become the new Battersea power station?
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FIF
The wrong type of horse is nearly as good as the railways "wrong type of snow"
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"exotic and prohibitivly expensive materials"
"exotic" maybe, "prohibitively expensive" how dare you Sir! ;-) I have some very good solutions for this problem regardless of whether it's horse or bull **** but that is advertising and Martyn BRM will be telling me off in a minute.
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In the Dorset area it costs about £ 50 to scrap a car. This has resulted in huge numbers of cars being deserted on the roadside (in dangerous places).If the regulations change so that it costs £ 250+ who will scrap a car legally ? most will end up with all indentification removed (or burnt out) and dumped out in the sticks.
Is this enviroment friendly ?
Problem is who will pay for the destruction of a vehicle ?
Manufacturers - not currently legally obliged.
Goverment - Subsidy ? fat chance.
Owner - No thanks (rather put £ 250 quid towards another car).
What a mess !
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Maybe the local authority will take the long term view and taking Best Value into account pay towards the cost of scrapping as a cheaper alternative to having to collect dumped cars and then dispose of them. Hey, there goes another pig with wings....
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Alwyn you might think differently when you see Filipino driving standards and traffic!! BUT, you cankeep any old car going and in super nick courtesy of thousands of back street repair boys who really know their stuff. In particular they do great paint, all out in the open and just let the sun bake it! Don't know how they do it, clear coat, the lot. We don't have an "old car" problem in that sense since they're all still on the road. Problem we have is shrinking road space!
Overall though Asians are pracxtical people, something you can't say of the seat-warmers who push you guys around.
Gas is still about 25p a liter, TPL insurance (compulsory) is about 10 pounds p.a. and road fund license costs about the same depending on engine size. Beer is 4 pounds a case of 24, ..
Then there's the girls, the beaches....hell...I'd better zip it, they'll all want to come.
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I don't understand all this about 'removing ID or burning out a car to hide it's identity....
the VIN # is hidden all over a modern car many of these locations are known only to the builder and are supplied to the police on a need to know basis...
unless you have access to this secret info and a LOT of time you can not hide the ID of a car....
the problem is it that it takes work and initiative on the part of the police or council to use this info which in the UK system will just point back to the last booked holder of the car... (Not mine mate I sold it in a pub years ago)
so enforcement has to go to the last booked owner regardless of how many times it has been sold in a pub... perhaps that will force folks to do the paperwork when they sell a banger on
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