Recycling your car is free, you are paid for the vehicle, and the law requires at least 95 per cent of it by weight to be recovered. For an end-of-life car, recycling and scrapping are the same regulated journey through an Authorised Treatment Facility. Enter your registration above to see what yours is worth.
Recycling or scrapping: is there a difference?
For a car at the end of its life, no. Whether you call it recycling, scrapping or disposal, a complete vehicle follows one legal route: it goes to an Authorised Treatment Facility, it is depolluted and dismantled, and the materials are recovered. There is no separate, greener option you are missing. The choice you actually have is who collects it, what they pay, and whether they do the job properly, and what scrapping your car involves covers exactly that.
The word matters less than the paperwork. Only an ATF can issue a Certificate of Destruction, and without one you remain the registered keeper. The five steps to scrapping a car covers the process in order.
What happens to your car
1Collection and check-inThe car is collected free and taken to an Authorised Treatment Facility, which holds an environmental permit and appears on the Environment Agency register.
2Reusable parts come offAnything with a second life is removed first: engines, panels, lights, interior parts. Reuse counts towards the recovery targets and is the greenest outcome of all.
3DepollutionEverything hazardous is removed and contained: fuel, oils, coolant, the battery, the catalytic converter, tyres, airbags. This is the regulated heart of the job, covered in detail in the vehicle recycling process.
4Crushing and shreddingThe depolluted shell is crushed, transported and shredded. Magnets and separators pull the ferrous metals from the non-ferrous, and both streams are sold back to industry.
5The difficult last fractionWhat remains is Automotive Shredder Residue: mixed plastics, foam, glass and textiles. Modern plants recover a growing share of it, and this fraction is where the industry's remaining recycling challenge sits.
How much of a car is actually recycled?
Since 2015 the law has required, for each producer's vehicles, that at least 95 per cent by average weight is reused or recovered, and at least 85 per cent is reused or recycled. Recovery is the wider term: it includes using material as energy, where recycling means turning it back into usable material.
| Measure | Legal target | Last published UK figure |
|---|
| Reuse and recovery | 95% | 92.8% (2018, Defra) |
| Reuse and recycling | 85% | 85.2% (2018, Defra) |
Targets: End-of-Life Vehicles (Producer Responsibility) Regulations 2005. UK figures: Defra, 2018, the most recent published full-year data. For comparison, the EU average in 2023 was 93.7 per cent reused and recovered (Eurostat).
Where each part goes
Almost every major component has its own route, and several have real value of their own.
The valuable three. The engine, the catalytic converter and the battery each carry scrap value that is included in your quote, which is why the car should arrive complete.
The regulated removals. Tyres are banned from landfill and go for crumb and fuel. Fluids are drained and reprocessed. Glass and plastics are the harder fractions, recovered at the shredder stage.
The bulk. Around two thirds of a car is metal, and steel and aluminium recycle almost indefinitely, which is what makes the economics of car recycling work.
Manufacturers also run take-back schemes for their own brands, a requirement of the same regulations.
Is it free, and do you get paid?
Both. The regulations are built so that disposing of a complete end-of-life vehicle should never cost the last owner anything. Commercially it goes further than free: the metal and the parts have value, so you are paid for the car. What scrap cars are currently paying shows where the market sits.
One choice is yours to make. Let the yard decide whether the car is dismantled for parts or destroyed, which usually gets you the best price, or insist it is destroyed, which guarantees a Certificate of Destruction but may lower the offer. Either way, official DEFRA guidance on how ATFs must handle vehicles is on gov.uk.
Ready to recycle your car?
Free collection, guaranteed price, Certificate of Destruction issued.
Get a quoteRecovery and recycling targets: End-of-Life Vehicles (Producer Responsibility) Regulations 2005, legislation.gov.uk. UK performance: Defra data for 2018, the most recent published full-year figures. EU comparison: Eurostat, 2023. Checked 28 August 2026.
