Green disposal costs dearly
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es Truck prices will be pushed up by a European Union directive that will force motor manufacturers to pay for the scrapping of worn-out vehicles in an environmentally friendly way.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders warning follows the agreement of final details of the Ell "end-of-life-vehicles" directive by a special conciliation committee linking the EU Council of Ministers and the European Parliament.
David Hulse, manager of the SMMT's MORD (Automotive Consortium on Recycling and Disposal), says it will probably cost the UK industry about £31:10m a year. "This is significant," he adds. "We rather suspect that we're going to be looking at passing these costs on."
The committee solved two outstanding differences over the law, which covers commercial vehicles up to 3.5 tonnes:
A Manufacturers will have to pay for all or most of the costs of disposal for vehicles put on the market from 1 January 2001, and from 1 January 2007 for older vehicles;
The use of lead, mercury, cadmium or hexavalent chromium in vehicles should be banned from 1 January 2003, with some exceptions for the use of lead as an alloying element.
The committee also agreed that vehicle and component manufacturers should provide dismantling information to authorised scrapping facilities. Disposal costs will not be born by a vehicle's final owner.