Car Disposal Problem

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30976, 4 February 1966, Page 11

Car Disposal Problem

rpHE problem of disposing -*■ of millions of cars fit only for the scrap heap has become acute in the United States and Britain and is beginning to be felt in Australia. The number of cars registered in the United States at the beginning of 1965 was 71,864,000. The number registered in Australia at the same date was 2,710,000. These figures do not include trucks and buses. What will happen to millions of cars now on the roads when they are no longer fit for use? More than seven million cars were discarded in the United States last year. Once they would have been compressed, baled as scrap, and melted down so the steel could be rerolled into plate.

But modern steel-making technology has so reduced the need for scrap that it is uneconomical to transport a car to a dismantling yard or to carry baled scrap to a steel mill. The result is that derelict cars are being abandoned in many parts of the American countryside and are becoming a blot on the landscape. One suggestion is that

large Government-subsidised

centres be established where whole cars could be reduced in two minutes to steel pellets for use in steel-making.

Another suggestion, which : would also mean Government : aid, is that the millions of ■ unwanted cars should be ■ taken out to sea and dumped : in deep water. :