Automobile recycling: Auto firms interested but governments are sleeping

Hyderabad: Recycling of automobiles has been seeing interest from automobile manufacturers for a while now but it is the government that is sleeping on the job.

The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers, which has had a group working on developing a framework and research in recycling of vehicles for the past 10 years has a system in place in its Automotive Mission Plan, 2016-26. The system seeks to make it easier, and also financially beneficial, for vehicle owners to scrap their old vehicles. However, only one scrapping unit has been set up in the country so far — in Chennai. But that’s just a demo unit.

Recycling of ELVs is standard practice across Japan, Korea, China and in several EU nations. In India, there are no laws which even define what an ELV is and what vehicles needs to be scrapped. As of now, in Telangana at least, the only legislation is payment of a ‘green tax’ by owners of such vehicles with ages exceeding 15 years from date of registration. The green tax is

Rs 250 and Rs 500 once in five years for motorcycles and private vehicles, respectively. For transport vehicles, it is Rs 200 every year.

An important reason for ensuring old vehicles do not ply on India’s roads is highlighted by the fact that the latest Bharat Stage-IV vehicle emission standards has mandated 1 gram per kilometer of Carbon Monoxide emission for petrol vehicles, whereas old vehicles manufactured before the year 2000 CO emission ranges between 6.2(in 1998) to even 27.1(in 1991).