Technical Paper
A Life Cycle Assessment of the Implications of Implementing the Proposed End of Life Vehicles Directive in the United Kingdom
2000-04-26
2000-01-1468
A life cycle assessment approach has been used to investigate the environmental impacts of disposal of end of life vehicles in the United Kingdom in 2015, according to current practice and the targets set in a UK industry implementation plan, and a proposed European Directive. The study found minor differences in environmental impact for the proposed scenarios with specific significant improvements over current practice. Certain flows dominate the assessed environmental impacts. The results showed that current practice is environmentally better compared to ‘zero recycling’. Significantly, end of life is between one to four orders of magnitude less than the total life cycle environmental impacts of a vehicle.
