CHENNAI: While the US and Japan have a robust process for de-registering end-of-life vehicles with dismantling units working in tandem with industry and government, vehicle scrap recycling in India still remains to be a highly unorganised market. Here, end-of-life vehicles are either abandoned on roads or unsafely stripped and scrap metals are sold.
Captain NS Mohan Ram (Retd), an auto industry veteran and former president of TVS Motor Company, emphasised this in his book Recycling of End of Life Automobiles — With Special Focus on India and Developing Nations.The book was launched in the city on Wednesday receiving the first copy of the book, transport commissioner, C Samayamoorthy said, “Nearly 2.5 crore vehicles have been registered in Tamil Nadu, of which 2.15 crore are two-wheelers. Every year, at least 18-20 lakh two-wheelers are registered. The vehicle population has almost tripled in a short time. With the public transport not in place (due to narrow roads), there is no scope for further expansion, but only for other sustainable remedies like recycling.”
He added that automobile is a good source of recycling as it generates 65%-70% iron scrap, 7%-8% aluminium scrap, 1%-1.5% copper scrap and 15 %-20 % rubber and plastic scrap. With the current scrap prices, a recycled car can fetch anywhere between `30,000-`35,000.
Mohan Ram said that India is currently the world’s largest manufacturer of two-wheelers and the fourth largest in the production of cars. “It is well on the way to meet the Automotive Mission Plan 2016-26 of tripling output within a decade. In stark contrast to its world-class, world-scale automotive manufacturing, the country operates primitive systems of scrapping vehicles.
The informal industry for scrapping old vehicles, located in residential areas, have neither the capacity nor capability to tackle the huge increase in end-of-life vehicles which will be generated in the future,” he said.Dr Sumantran, chairman of Celeris Technologies, MK Surappa, vice chancellor of Anna University, and C Narasimhan from Sundaram Clayton Ltd., were present.