Government's need to heed recycling warnings

Australian governments continue to be “short-sighted” and are “burying their heads in the sand” about vehicle recycling, at the expense of the environment.

That is the warning from Darran van der Woude, Chairman of the SA Dismantlers Division of MTA SA, and an enthusiastic onlooker of EVs.

As Chairman, he is sending the concerns of his peers in a unified voice to Canberra.

He concedes the challenge of recycling EVs is significant. But he warns that well before then, Australia is ill-prepared to cope with the number of ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles that will need to be recycled as consumers transition to EVs.

The big issue, he said, is a worrying lack of government policy for end-of-life vehicles (ELVs).

“We’re the only first-world country not to have an end-of-life vehicle policy,” Darran said.

“They’ve taken their eye off the ball.

“Pushing the EV factor while ignoring an ELV policy is really short-sighted.

“We told them it was going to be a problem 10 years ago and the problem’s getting worse and they are burying their heads in the sand.

“There are a lot of components to our industry and they aren’t doing the right thing environmentally.

“There are too many people who are doing the wrong thing and contaminants from vehicles are polluting the environment.

“You’re going to have these ICE vehicles coming off the road as you’re trying to get EVs on the road and these ICE vehicles are going to be going into whatever sector rather than into a committed decommision and recycle facility that is processing the vehicles with environmental best practices.”

Inroads are being made he said, but not quickly enough.

Attitudes

Darran has run River Murray Auto Wreckers since buying the business from his parents in 2008. He is an active supporter of the EV drive.

“Because they go like a cut snake!” he enthused. “I like my V8s. I like how fast they go. But the progress that’s been made on EVs in the last five years is crazy and if you extrapolate that over the next five years, they’re going to be unstoppable.”

The EV puzzle

The process of recycling EVs, Darran said, is improving. It primarily involves safely removing and recycling their lithium-ion batteries.

“It’s an issue although it’s becoming less and less of an issue and there are several recycling facilities that can break them down into some base stuff and then send the (lithium) sludge overseas.”

But he concedes it’s just one piece of the whole EV puzzle which in Australia is exacerbated by our tyranny of distance.

“It is a complicated and costly exercise and with Australia’s geography, it’s expensive.

“We don’t have the capacity and the flow to make it efficient or financially viable long term at the moment. “It’s going to take a lot of government incentives and a lot of R and D (research and development) from the private sector to get to that point.”

Ultimately, the consumer bears the expense of battery recycling.

“Whoever recycles it, pays for it. It would be on the end user, the dismantler or the recycler.

He said while the dismantler paid to recycle the battery, the charge to the consumer could actually be worth more than the vehicle was worth.

Training critical

Training remains a key focus for the industry going forward so people aren’t dying when the vehicles are being dismantled pulling these things apart.”

“The voltage is so high that if you’re doing it wrong, you’re just going to zap yourself straight up.”

Global comparison

Darran fears Australia will never be able to compete with the recycling goals already demanded in the European Union.

“Countries like Germany, Netherlands and Japan have some really strict requirements on how much of a vehicle must be recycled.

“I think it’s 92 or 93 per cent by weight.

“If you’ve got a vehicle that’s one tonne, the engine is 200 kg, the gearbox is 100 kg and you’ve re-sold that, that’s 300 kg recycled.

“If you crush the vehicle and the body shell is 400 kg, then you’re still more than 200 kg short of hitting that final number of 93 per cent.

“The issue with copying (the EU model) here is the geography.

“How do you get all these cars from all over the country into an area the size of Victoria for them to be processed?”

Darran doesn’t own an EV – yet.

But as a racing enthusiast, he wants one.

Right now, there are three public charging points in Barmera for the town’s population of around 3000 people.

He believes a national rollout of enough recharge grids to satisfy a country of nearly eight million square kilometres makes the NBN deployment look like building a sandcastle.

“Having the power network to get to each place and not needing a diesel generator on top of the solar to be able to charge these vehicles is going to be a massive logistical issue,” he said.