Brits to get their beaters crushed for free
Starting on January 1, 2007 car-makers doing business in Britain will be required to dispose of cars from their brands when they are no longer in use. Approximately 2 million cars a year are scrapped in the UK, currently at the owners expense. The new plan is intended to ensure that cars are dismantled and recycled in an environmentally-sound manner. Most car-makers have contracted with one of two companies Autogreen and Cartakeback to handle the disposal of cars. Autogreen GM Mike Austin-Dodds says the cars coming in will be drained of all fluids which will then be re-processed, and all the tires will be shredded for use in things like playground surfaces. Bodywork metal will also be recycled. This will all be done free of charge to car-owners, which of course means that car-owners will pay for it in the price of new cars. Since most pollution from cars comes from older vehicles, anything that gets old cars off the road is definitely to be commended.
[Source: BBC via Winding Road]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Mark_H 11:38AM (12/29/2006)
Boy, I'd love to see North Carolina identify the 1,000 or 10,000 most polluting vehicles and get them off the road. Every now and again you'll see an old beater on the highway trailing a plume of exhaust and you know it's spewing out many, many times more pollutants than a newer car. At $1,500 per vehicle, say, 1,000 older cars could be bought and scrapped for only $1.5 million. Plus scrapping fees, of course.
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