Throwing away our morals
15 June 2009
“Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked the beleaguered owner of a stricken Morris Minor, condemned to the side of the road. This car dated from ’67, an age of post-war attitudes, Sergeant Pepper, and the Summer of Love when everybody in San Francisco sported flowers in their hair.
And after 42 years, this car was still trundling along the road (albeit not when I stumbled across it).
I have a daily driver, but my other car is a ‘neo-classic’; a 17 year-old hatchback that is tragically caught in that difficult period between being ‘old’ and being considered a classic. But it’s a veritable spring chicken compared to that Minor. And that got me thinking about whether the cars (and the insatiably huge number of components they comprise of) will be around in 40 years. There is a monumentally huge amount of electronics in modern cars, but what happens to them all at the end of the car’s life?
The UK government’s car scrappage scheme has now been in force for one month and figures suggest that approximately 20% of new car sales are a result of the scrappage scheme. Under the initiative, owners of cars that are at least ten years old can trade in their vehicle for a discount off a brand new car; typically in the area of £2000. But are we scrapping perfectly good vehicles just because they’re old? Vehicles that would potentially provide many years of faithful service are being sentenced to residing in scrap yards.
The End-of-Life Vehicles (ELV) Directive (2000/53/EC) came into force in October 2000 and Member States enacted legislation to comply with the Directive by 21 April 2002. The Directive requires EU Member States to:
• Ensure that all ELVs are only treated by authorised dismantlers
• Provide free take-back of all ELVs for new vehicles put on the market after 2002; from 2007 provide free take-back for all vehicles including those put on the market before 2002
• Restrict the use of heavy metals in vehicles from July 2003
• Ensure that a minimum of 85% of vehicles are re-used or recovered (including energy recovery) and at least 80% must be re-used or recycled from 2006, increasing to 95% re-used or recovered (including energy recovery) and 85% re-used or recycled by 2015.
It also requires the ‘de-pollution’ of vehicles before being recycled. This involves extracting petrol, diesel, brake fluid, engine oil, antifreeze, batteries, airbags, mercury-bearing components and catalysts. However, there are a variety of polymers in plastic materials throughout a car, which are not being recycled efficiently and is a wasteful drain on oil reserves. As for non-ferrous metals, it is not known whether these are recycled.
But ultimately, the big question asked earlier remains unanswered. What happens to the electronics in a car when a vehicle is scrapped?
It has long been said that modern cars contain more computing power than Apollo 11 that took man to the moon. With features such as electric windows, electric mirrors, and heated seats, it’s not surprising that there are around 50 separate computers controlling in-car displays, satellite navigation, the ABS, air bags, air conditioning, and doorlocks, not to mention the ones controlling engine emissions. Adjusting spark plug rates, fuel injection and the air-to-fuel ratio occurs many, many times per second and the ECU (engine control unit) uses closed loop control to gather data from sensors. A modern ECU might contain a 32bit, 40MHz processor and some of the other components in the ECU are ADCs, DACs, and chips that enable communication speeds of up to 500Kbps.
So what about recycling these electronics? Where does RoHS and WEEE come into this? Surely we’re being extremely wasteful and sending components to landfill that should be recycled?
It’s the next instalment in a long story of a contemporary society with a throwaway attitude. Disposable cameras with flashbulbs are such an everyday object and are an example of the inevitable result of over-consumption and consumerism that results in a lack of respect for the goods. They no longer have a value. The modern generation has been instilled with the notion that when something doesn’t work or it’s old, it’s thrown away. Whatever happened to the idea of ‘make do and mend’?
Part of the problem is that fixing old devices can often cost as much, if not more, than purchasing a new item. Replacement mobile phone batteries cost about the same as a brand new handset that comes with a brand new battery. Is it that we’re accustomed to buying and upgrading so frequently? Perhaps it’s the mindset now, where we tolerate disposing of items that no longer work. But this leads to mountains of e-waste that can end up in developing countries. If we think that way about a mobile phone and other consumer goods, it was only a matter of time before we’d consider cars in the same way. It seems that cars have become the latest consumable items we throwaway when we no longer want them. Are we really saving the environment by throwing things away?
There is an argument that as new cars are more fuel-efficient than older ones, we should all change to a shiny brand new vehicle and save the planet. What appears to have been overlooked though is the amount of energy exerted in manufacturing a brand new vehicle. The drain on precious resources, the carbon footprint of the factories manufacturing tyres, electronics, seat foam, and the thousands of other parts that comprise a new car. Besides, there are stockpiles of new, unregistered cars sitting at ports; we simply don’t need new cars to be manufactured.
Surely it would be more environmentally friendly to keep the existing cars on the road, and instead of investing £300 million into the scrappage scheme as the UK government has done, instead distribute the money amongst car owners in the form of free servicing and MoT tests. This would ensure that the cars that are on the road are running efficiently and meet the required legal standard.
The scrappage scheme was designed to kick-start an ailing motor industry, but it’s little more than a quick fix to paper over the cracks. For the sake of the environment, perhaps the scheme should be scrapped.
What are your thoughts on the subjects mentioned in this comment? Send an email to let me know.
This week’s leader was written by Paul Wolfe, EMTww’s Assistant Editor
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