There was a time when scrapping a car meant passing an end-of-live vehicle to the first person willing to take it off your hands. Which was usually some kind of scrap yard, or a dealer of some kind who might pay you a few quid for your trouble. 

Today, the whole thing is much more extensively legislated. The Environment Agency now single-handedly decides who is permitted to take scrap cars, and take care of the recycling process.

Those who receive permission to offer such services subsequently become an Authorised Treatment Facility, or an ATF. 

But what many motorists are unaware of is how it is now illegal to pass a scrap car onto a provider that isn’t fully licensed and registered.  Collecting and recycling scrap cars without the permission of the Environment Agency is a criminal offence, so it’s important to be mindful of who you are doing business with.

Why Scrap with an Approved Authorised Treatment Facility?

If you are duped into handing your car over to an unlicensed service provider, there’s a good chance you yourself could end up in trouble. An immediate red flag is if you are offered cash for your scrap car, which has been illegal for some time.

Likewise, if you are not provided with a formal certificate of disposal for your end-of-life car, you’re almost certainly looking at a shady operator.

Other than this, the benefit of scrapping with an ATF lies in the assurances it brings of responsible scrapping and recycling.  The overwhelming majority of what goes into a car’s make-up can be recycled, or put straight back into the system in some way.  Nevertheless, it’s a complex and demanding process that involves stripping, sorting, separating and ultimately recycling a wide range of scrap materials.

Specifically, there are several eligibility requirements that must be met for a provider to achieve ATF status:

  • All cars collected or accepted should be fully de-polluted no later than four days after their arrival on site. 
  • The premises where the scrap vehicles are stored must be adequately protected and secured, in order to prevent theft, vandalism or arson. 
  • Appropriate equipment must be positioned around the site to deal with spillages, and hazardous fluids must not be allowed to compromise the safety of the surrounding environment.
  • No more than 5,000 tonnes of waste motor vehicles and 25,000 tonnes of waste metal must be taken and processed by any one site within the same year.
  • Under no circumstances must any waste be burned, or discarded in an irresponsible manner.

In addition to the above, it is also a legal requirement to ensure all aspects of the car scrapping and recycling process of fully documented.  There should be a traceable paper trail that can be used by both parties (the motorist and the car scrapping service) to prove that everything was handled responsibly.

At Take My Scrap Car, we exclusively work with the region’s highest-rated ATFs, ensuring the safe, responsible and legal disposal of all types of scrap vehicles.

For more information or to discuss the disposal of an end-of-life car of any kind, contact a member of our customer support team.