ARC Chief: Recyclers need a role in government policy

The Automotive Recyclers of Canada executive director Wally Dingman has called for automotive recyclers to be involved before governments finalize policies affecting vehicles at the end of their useful lives.

Dingman discussed government relations, electric vehicle batteries, cross-border trade and the future of the recycling industry during a July 1 appearance on the ARA Unscripted podcast.

Dingman made the comments during a July 1 episode of ARA Unscripted, a long-form interview podcast produced by the U.S.-based Automotive Recyclers Association and hosted by its executive director, Vince Edivan.

“It’s amazing how often you get legislators drafting language and they’re not including all the stakeholders involved,” Dingman said.

Automotive Recyclers of Canada, or ARC, is a national umbrella organization whose members are seven provincial automotive recycling associations. Dingman said it acts as a clearing house for information and helps the associations respond to regulatory issues that cross provincial borders.

“It was a way to create a clearing house of information, to understand what’s going on across the country and try to help create some harmonization,” he said.

Dingman pointed to a Saskatchewan proposal involving extended producer responsibility for electric-vehicle batteries. Extended producer responsibility programs make manufacturers responsible for managing products after consumers have finished using them.

He said ARC learned about the proposal through vehicle manufacturers and contacted the Saskatchewan Automotive Recyclers Association. The provincial and national associations then made submissions to the government.

The battery provisions were removed after officials considered the effects on recyclers and the national battery recovery system already in place, Dingman said.

“To start throwing batteries in different jurisdictions under EPR when there’s something else already happening nationally doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

Dingman said the case demonstrated the importance of consulting the businesses that will eventually receive, dismantle and process vehicles.

“Auto manufacturers are designing a product and they’re creating rules, regulations and processes, and they’re not consulting the people who end up handling these things,” he said.

Dingman said he supports new technology and progressive vehicle design, but recyclers must be able to explain how proposed changes will affect operations farther down the automotive supply chain.

“We need to be sitting at the table so that you understand what we do and how we do it,” he said. “You’re impacting things downstream.”

Manufacturers and governments cannot simply transfer the cost and responsibility to recyclers after vehicles and batteries reach the end of their useful lives, he added.

“You can’t just dump the garbage on us at the end of the day and hope that we’re going to clean it up,” Dingman said. “We’re not going to clean up your mess.”

Dingman also discussed Retire Your Ride, a former federally funded vehicle-retirement program administered with support from ARC. The program paid owners to retire older vehicles and required participating recyclers to process them according to environmental standards.

He said it removed older vehicles from Canadian roads, brought money into provincial recycling associations and helped ARC establish credibility with the federal government.

“We got a lot of vehicles off the road, did it responsibly and proved ourselves,” he said. “ARC, although it’s a small association, was definitely hitting way above our weight.”

However, the program also removed vehicles that could otherwise have supplied recyclers with reusable original-equipment parts.

“Although I know what the wins were, I also know what the losses were,” Dingman said. “We took a lot of source material out of the market.”

Dingman said he would oppose a similar program that encouraged motorists to replace gasoline-powered vehicles with electric vehicles.

“Absolutely not, because that’s our feedstock,” he said. “It’s a big inventory disruptor, and it’s taken a long time to recover.”

Electric vehicles remain a small part of the vehicles reaching recycling facilities, but Dingman said the industry must prepare before volumes increase.

“It has to be on the agenda, but it can’t be a preoccupation,” he said. “We have to pay attention today so that a few years from now we’re not dealing with the mess of us not paying attention.”

Recyclers need dependable systems for moving damaged, depleted or unwanted batteries out of their facilities, he said.

“My responsibility is to make sure that recyclers have an avenue to dispose of stuff that they normally can’t get rid of,” Dingman said.

He also called for more hands-on training. A battery may no longer behave as designed after a vehicle has been damaged in a collision, leaving recyclers to manage risks that are not fully understood.

“If you’re going to handle them, you have to have the training,” he said. “You have to understand what it is that you’re dealing with.”

Dingman said battery fires and electrical hazards make training necessary even when a recycler handles only a small number of electric vehicles.

“They’re either going to destroy your property or kill you,” he said. “We need to figure out how to deal with them.”

He said vehicle manufacturers should provide technical information and help finance the training and recovery systems needed to manage their products.

“They created this, so help us out a little bit,” Dingman said. “They should be part of the solution.”

Dingman also questioned manufacturers that promote sustainability while resisting the use of recycled original-equipment parts. Those parts are recovered from end-of-life vehicles and returned to service rather than being replaced with newly manufactured components.

“They use all the buzzwords—sustainability, circular economy—right up to the point where you start to introduce the value of reusing a part they’ve already made versus buying another one they want to sell,” he said. “Then you don’t really get to hear them talk about circular economy.”

Cross-border trade was another concern. Dingman said tariffs and political disputes have disrupted the movement of recycled parts and automotive materials between Canada and the United States.

“It caused quite a bit of disruption and, sadly, it caused some tension,” he said.

The Canadian and U.S. industries had operated across the border for decades with few obstacles, Dingman said.

“What we do is the same, and the border for so many years was virtually invisible,” he said.

He said some Canadian recyclers selling smaller parts to U.S. buyers have been affected by changes to the US$800 duty-free threshold for low-value shipments. Freight costs have also made some transactions uneconomical.

“The U.S. is our biggest customer by population,” Dingman said. “I’m seeing freight bills having 45% and 50% surcharges on them. Freight isn’t making sense right now.”

Dingman said the Canadian and U.S. associations must protect their working relationship despite changes in government policy.

“Governments come, governments go, and policies come, policies go,” he said. “Let’s maintain our relationship.”

The industry must also do more to explain its work to governments, insurers and consumers, Dingman said. Many people continue to associate automotive recycling with the traditional junkyard rather than modern businesses that recover parts, remove hazardous fluids and process vehicle materials.

“This is the most misunderstood industry on the planet,” he said.

Dingman said television and movies have reinforced the image by repeatedly using salvage yards as settings for criminal activity.

“Hollywood has done us no favours,” he said. “Of course, it always ends with a body in the trunk. It’s just like, this is not helping us.”

Professional recyclers need to explain the environmental and technical work performed at their facilities, he said.

“We have to tell our story,” Dingman said. “We have to tell people what we do. This is not 1960. This is not a junkyard. We don’t have a junkyard dog.”

The industry veteran pointed to the Canadian Automotive Recyclers Environmental Code, an audited environmental standard used by participating provincial associations, as one way of distinguishing professional recyclers from unregulated operators.

“Our thinking was that if you got your environmental house in order, the rest would kind of follow,” he said. “That actually has been our experience.”

He added that associations must also prepare their next generation of leaders by recruiting promising members into committee work before board positions become vacant.

“You should be looking around and identifying who you think has potential and then recruiting them into a committee,” he said.

Committee work allows an association to determine whether potential directors contribute ideas, work well with others and can accept compromise.

“You see: are they collaborative, or are they a ‘my way or the highway’ person?” Dingman said. “You could vet all that through committee work for a couple of years.”

Dingman said boards need a mixture of younger participants and experienced members. The Ontario Automotive Recyclers Association has created a shadow board that allows potential future directors to observe meetings and become familiar with the association’s work.

“You want to have a good mix of young and, we’ll say, seasoned,” he said. “You don’t want an echo chamber.”

He said the automotive recycling industry has a strong future, but businesses must adapt as vehicles, technology and markets change.

“Don’t complain about the industry evolving,” Dingman said. “Figure out what your piece of it is.”