POLICY WATCH : STEEL SCRAP POLICY
1. INTRODUCTION.
Ministry of Steel has issued the steel scrap recycling policy which provides standard guidelines for collecting, dismantling , and shredding activities in an orgamised, safe and environmentally sound manner.
It seeks to promote 6 R's which are principles of
Reduce
Reuse
Recycle
Recover
Redesign
Remanufacture
Through scientific handling by authorized center.
Major sources of steel scrap are the following.
Automobile industry.
Construction sector.
Ship breaking.
2. INSIGHTS
Steel ministry wants to develop a globally competitive steel industry by adopting state of the art environment friendly technology.
According to experts this policy is nothing but “Swachh Bharat 2.0”
Country will use scrap and ferrous metals to recycle and remanufacture so that import burden could be reduced.
It will also create demand for automobile sector and also clean the scrap spread here and there.
Policy also has implementation mechanism how steel will be collected its role procedures including end use of it.
There are a lot of commercial vehicles let alone private cars which are 15 years old depicting a poor shadow of public perception and preference of adopting to scrapping.
Hence, this policy wants to attract Indian vehicle owners to come forward for scrapping old vehicles to promote “Circular Economy” in steel sector.
But this policy will work more efficiently when Ministry of Heavy industries and Ministry of road and transport will come up with a followed up policy on extended producers responsibility ensuring that vehicles manufacturers provide incentives for scrapping owing to the fact that behavior of Indian customers is conservative towards their vehicles.
Or the government should introduce some kind of disincentive in case when a vehicle crosses a threshold of lets say 15 years. After that when the vehicles owner comes for registry the fee charged must be increased many folds.
Both incentive and disincentive will work to push customers towards scrapping. Hence, giving them a “Behavioral Nudge”.
Through this policy the concept of “ waste to wealth” is also promoted. It will help all the stakeholders like producers will benefit from getting additional raw material.
Society will benefit from the fact that space occupied by dump yards in urban areas will become idle.
It will also enrich the “Natural wealth” of nation by reducing the use of basic raw material and by promoting recycling and reuse.
Additional Dump yard centers will also create more jobs in semi urban areas.
It will also help achieve the goal set by “National Steel policy 2016” which envisages production capacity of 300 Million tones per annum by 2030
It will also reduce the burden on “Current Account Deficit” (CAD) because deficit of scrap is also a problem in India as a matter of fact India had to import scrap of 7 Million tones in 2017 alone.