Car Buyback And Recycling Policy In India By Next Year

Addressing increasing concerns about the country’s car scrapping policy, or the lack of it thereof, the government is set to make it mandatory for automakers and their agents to buy and recycle old and ‘unroadworthy’ vehicles. 

The move is aimed at ridding India’s roads of millions of old cars, trucks and buses that are a major source of pollution in the country, including the worst smog in decades that choked the capital city in November.

According to reports in the media, the new rule is set to be put in place from next year, once the environment ministry notifies it. It will be framed on guidelines similar to the recycling policy for electronic goods that fixes responsibility on the manufacturer.

The producer-responsibility principle makes it mandatory for the maker of an item to take back the product once it is declared unworthy for use or if it exceeds the length of time for which it remains usable. However, enough time will be given to automakers to start following the new norms and setting up required facilities. 

After initiating discussions to formulate a car scrapping policy earlier this year, the government had recently proposed a Voluntary Vehicle Fleet Modernisation Programme (V-VMP) that aims to scrap heavy vehicles which are more than 15 years old in the first phase.

Statistically, India was home to 87 lakh end-of-life vehicles in 2015, with the number set to reach 2.18 crore by 2025, according to a Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) estimate.

When the country’s Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari met with his Deutsch counterpart in India, the Indian government even sought advanced environment-friendly technology from Germany that would help scrap old polluting vehicles and process the waste generated by it.

Car scrapping is carried out by the association of automakers jointly across the globe. In countries where it is mandatory to do so, companies such as Toyota, Volkswagen and BMW have stations to take back and dismantle vehicles.