New fears over car dumping

A South East Cornwall scrap metal merchant has branded the new, tougher environmental laws for the scrapping of vehicles, as a load of rubbish, and says it will lead to Cornwall becoming one big dump.

Graham Orchard, of W H Orchard and Son of Burnt House, near Dobwalls, says the rules and regulations soon to be enforced will be an expensive operation, which means that he will have to end his currently free service of taking cars for scrap (without the tyres), and will have to make a charge.

'I envisage that eventually merchants like myself will have to charge somewhere in the region of £100 – £150 to dispose of a car,' he said.

'Given that my service is presently free and there are people that still prefer to dump their cars, I predict that within a year the whole of Cornwall will be full of abandoned vehicles. Country lanes and roadside verges will be used.' He added that they still pay for better quality vehicles however.

Charge

Mr Orchard, who operates the business with his father William, says he will have to start making some sort of charge by the end of the year, and in some cases that could be more than the actual worth of the vehicle itself, which again will lead to more dumping.

The business, which was started in 1956 by Mr Orchard's grandfather, Henry Orchard, is already recovering vehicles for Caradon Council.

Environmental Services Officer Pat Gormley said the Council was trying its best in a difficult situation and confirmed that there were 335 abandoned cars in the district last year, which was twice as many as the year before.

'It costs the council approximately £150 per vehicle to have it recovered for scrapping' he said, 'it is a problem which is not expected to improve in the foreseeable future'.

Invest

Mr Orchard said before the new European regulations were introduced, each scrapped vehicle would have its tyres removed, either by the owner, or by the yard for a small fee, and all fluids extracted into one holding tank, but this will now change.

'We will have to invest in special machinery for de-pollution work at a cost somewhere in the region of £50,000' he said. 'Each fluid – petrol, brakes, battery acid, anti freeze etc, has to be extracted and now separated. Also, whereas every part of a car not metal, such as seats, plastic bumpers, glass and dash boards, were formerly crushed with the car at the scrap yard, and then separated at the collecting bay in Avonmouth Docks during the final crushing, before shipping, this now has to be done by merchants like me, at the source. Somebody has to pay for all this as scrap value is so low, and I'm afraid it will be the vehicle owner' he said.