The last decade has been fascinating for the global automobile industry. The progressive leaps by the electric vehicle industry have given the world a hope of greener mobility. Even in the traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) space, enhanced emission control standards aim to reduce the carbon footprint for millions of vehicles running on the roads.
However, the industry has a lot more to achieve for sustainable transport. A vehicle’s carbon footprint is not only about the emission when it runs on the road. The journey starts at the production stage, where it requires electric circuits made of several precious and rare earth metals, the vehicle body and interior parts made of alloys etc. Needless to say, like any other natural resource, we have limited availability of metals and sourcing every ounce is costly time-consuming. Moreover, it often has a profound impact on the environment. Moreover, once the vehicle completes its lifecycle and goes for scrapping, these metals are often rendered useless or reach scrap dealers who use unsafe and not-so-environment-friendly methods to extract the metals to some extent. Moreover, these methods are also inefficient in deriving the scrap’s total value.
Currently, India imports six million tonnes of scrap steel due to a domestic demand and supply gap. Organized metal recycling addresses the metals scarcity, cost pressure, and supply chain constraints to a great extent. As the nomenclature suggests, metal recycling is the process of extracting valuable, precious, and rare-earth metals from scrapped vehicles. These metals can be found everywhere, be the used electric batteries, old engines, or even the rear-view mirrors. Global as well as domestic automobile manufacturers are investing in facilities to salvage old parts, but the industry is also looking to recycle the millions of electric batteries used for the electric vehicles of the future
Apart from reducing the cost of manufacturing new vehicles, organized metal recycling also provides an affordable source of raw materials to many other industries such as the electronics, steel and waste-to-energy sectors. Given the importance of metal recycling, the Ministry of Mines has notified the National Non-Ferrous Metal Scrap Recycling Framework, 2020. The framework aims to nurture a sustainable scrap recycling ecosystem by adopting optimal processes and standards, cutting edge technology, and environment friendly measures; and work towards creating economic wealth and a shared national responsibility to safeguard the environment and inter-generational equity. There is also a similar proposed mechanism for steel scrap.
With the systematic implementation of the Government’s plans, there is a significant opportunity to recover rare metals and reduce pressure to import scrapped metals. These savings can easily translate into reduced prices of EVs and remove the price disparity between IC engine vehicles and EVs. By bridging the price gap between the two, the country can adopt EVs faster and progress towards a sustainable future.
(This guest column is written by Rajesh Gupta, Founder, Nupur Recyclers)