End-of-life vehicles at shredder companies and flotation units

Directive 2000/53/EG is the standard legislative document regarding on the processing of end-of-life vehicles.


As in most EU countries, the ELV Directive has been transposed into the Belgian/Flemish legislation.

The OVAM is the Flemish public waste agency.

Each EU member state has to report in June 2008 to the European Commission how they meet the targets for 2006 on recycling end-of-life-vehicles set out in the Directive 2000/53/EG.

The producers responsability organisation for ELV's in Belgium is Febelauto. Febelauto organises the collection and treatment of the end of life vehicles. The federation of carproducers, the federation of authorised treatment facilities and other industrial stakeholders are represented in Febelauto. Febelauto also has the responsibility to monitor the recycling result.

The monitoring of the registration, the depollution and the dismantling of end-of-life-vehicles is done by the EMS-system (end-of-life vehicle monitoring system) of Febelauto.

In order to obtain reliable results the OVAM ordered a study to calculate the recycling percentages obtained by treatment of end-of-live vehicles after depollution and dismantling for every shredder in Belgium. In order to learn what separations are carried out by the different treatment facilities, at least one visit was made to all facilities in Belgium that treat shredder output materials (shredders as well as other companies). For all facilities a flowsheet was composed. With the gathered data a model was built for calculating the percentages needed. Results indicate that all Belgian shredders accomplish between 78.1 and 92.5% recycling and energetic valorisation in 2006. In order to calculate the complete recyclingpercentages obtained for ELV's in Belgium, these shredderresults, must be added to the reuse, recycle and recovery results of the depollution and dismantling facilities, monitored in the EMS-system.

For 2006, Belgium can report a recyclingpercentage of 87% and a total recoverypercentage of 89.94%. It is clear that Belgium meets the targets of ELV's set out in the European Directive.

More information can be found in the repport: "Validation of the recycling percentages for end-of-life vehicles at shredder companies and flotation units".