End-of-life vehicles
Car recycling
By weight, about 95% of a scrapped car is used again — as parts, as metal, or as fuel. That is the legal target every Authorised Treatment Facility works to, and every yard on the network is one. Here is what happens to your car between the collector’s truck pulling away and the steel turning up in something new.
1. Booked in
The car is logged against its registration and VIN, matched to your booking, and entered on the DVLA’s Certificate of Destruction system. From that moment it no longer exists as a vehicle, and you are no longer its keeper. The certificate number goes on your booking and the certificate is emailed to you.
2. Depollution
This is what the permit is really about. Before anyone touches a spanner, everything hazardous comes out on a sealed rig: the battery first, then fuel, engine oil, gearbox oil, coolant, brake fluid, power steering fluid, screenwash and air-conditioning refrigerant, each into its own tank. Airbags and seat-belt pretensioners are fired or removed, the tyres come off, and the catalytic converter is cut out for precious-metal recovery. On older cars the mercury switches go too. Nothing reaches a drain.
3. Parts with a second life
With the car made safe, anything worth reusing is taken off: engines and gearboxes in good order, alternators and starters, panels, lights, alloy wheels. A part that goes straight onto another car saves all the energy of making a new one, which is why reuse ranks above recycling in the regulations. What is left — the shell, the wiring loom, glass and plastics — goes for material recovery.
4. The shredder
Bare shells are baled and sent to a shredder, which reduces a car to fist-sized pieces in seconds. Magnets pull out the steel — roughly two thirds of a car by weight — and eddy-current separators recover the aluminium, copper and other non-ferrous metals. The residue of plastics, foam, rubber and glass is sorted for recycling where it can be and used for energy where it cannot.
The 95% rule
UK regulations, carried over from the EU End-of-Life Vehicles Directive, require 95% of each vehicle by weight to be reused, recycled or recovered, and at least 85% to be reused or recycled rather than burnt for energy. The steel from your car is back in the supply chain within weeks, and recycled steel takes around 70% less energy to make than steel from ore.
Why the licence matters to you
An unlicensed yard can offer a few pounds more precisely because it skips the depollution and the paperwork, and the cost lands on you: with no Certificate of Destruction you stay on the DVLA record as keeper, liable for the tax, the insurance and whatever the car is used for next. Every collector on the network holds an ATF permit and a waste carrier registration, we check both before they get a single job, and the driver will show you a copy on request. Get your price and the rest is handled.
Common questions
What is an Authorised Treatment Facility?
A site permitted by the Environment Agency (SEPA in Scotland, NRW in Wales) to depollute and dismantle end-of-life vehicles. The permit sets rules for how fluids, batteries and other hazardous parts are handled and stored, and it is the only kind of site that can issue a Certificate of Destruction. We check every collector’s permit before they join the network and again when it comes up for renewal.
Are parts from my car sold on?
Often, and that is the point. A part in good condition with a buyer waiting — an alternator, a door in the right colour, a set of alloys — is the greenest outcome there is, and the regulations encourage it. It is also why yards that break cars can pay more for the right car. Anything worn or safety-critical goes for material recycling instead.
What happens to the battery and the fluids?
They come out first. Fuel, oil, coolant, brake fluid, screenwash and air-conditioning gas are drained into separate sealed tanks and taken away by licensed waste carriers. Lead-acid batteries go to a battery recycler; hybrid and electric packs to a specialist.
Is it greener to scrap an old car or keep running it?
It depends on the car and on what replaces it. A well-kept older car can be greener than building a new one. A car that fails emissions tests, leaks or is unsafe is better recycled: the steel goes back into new products at a fraction of the energy it takes to make steel from ore.