With currently over 800,000 vehicles removed from Australian roads annually and expected to increase, the imperative for Government and industry to develop a policy solution that minimizes the negative impacts on the environment and provides a sustainable business opportunity for industry is required. MTAA, and its member association, the Victoria Automotive Chamber of Commerce (VACC) is advocating the Commonwealth Government to develop a vehicle end-of-life (EOL) recycling scheme that is cost neutral for government and promotes business opportunity and activity for the Automotive recycling and dismantling industry.
Australia is one of the only OECD countries without a deliberate, national coordinated strategy to deal with vehicles that have reached end of life naturally by age use or written off by accident or incident.
There is a significant opportunity for dismantlers / recyclers to benefit from the development of a EOL recycling scheme, but action from the Federal Government (Environment Australia) has been slow due to the potential cost and development of policies that cross multiple government and government departmental jurisdictions.
MTAA and VACC have taken it upon themselves to ‘unlock’ the basket by providing to Environment Australia and the Federal Minister a Policy Framework to demonstrate how such a scheme might work, how it could be funded (and self-funding) and the policy imperatives that would need to be legislated.
MTAA and VACC have in partnership with Monash University and Ducere Business School produced distinctive pieces of work which included:
- Identifying average national de-commissioning costs.
- Environmental compliance requirements by jurisdiction and against international best practice.
- Differences in approaches to decommissioning /dismantling between recycler business models and jurisdiction.
- An overview of what has been undertaken and is currently underway in other leading OECD countries including lessons learned and problems experienced
- Financial modelling based on industry (manufacturer / importer) pays; consumer pays (registration or levy) or combination of both.
A consultant has been engaged to provide an approach to finalisation of the policy framework and stakeholder and political engagement strategy with a view to either proceeding with the suggested pathway or MTAA proceeding on its own. The aim is to have draft policy and macro operating suggestions before the Minister by mid-2018.
APRAA members have played a key advisory role in the development work thus far. Their in-depth industry knowledge has provided technical and business input into policy frameworks so that any developed solution is practical and appropriate to the business operations of recyclers and dismantlers.