Tyre Recovery Association demands action
'Tyres burn while the [UK] Government fiddles', warns Secretary General of the Association.
The Tyre Recovery Association (TRA) says the majority of tyres find their way to India where many are burnt in illegal pyrolysis plants.
The TRA calls for immediate action fon domestic tyre recovery capability and is asking Mary Creagh, the Minister for Waste and Recycling, to end the T8 exemption and export end-of-life (ELT) whole tyres.
The letter to the minister says that responsible operators are being squeezed at both ends. Firstly, by those operating with T8 licences who undercut tyre collection prices, while at the same time losing out on the processing of recovered tyres as current regulation incentivises T8 operators to bale whole tyres for export markets.
Accordingly, evidence from Indian tyre trade bodies and anecdotally gathered information by British tyre recovery operators shows the very significant contribution to the environmentally illegal pyrolysis plants in India comes from these UK ELT whole-tyre exports.
India’s leading trade body, the ATMA, which represents 95% of the tyre industry in India, is calling for an end to waste-tyre imports.
Mary Creagh MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary at the Department of Environment, Food, Rural Affairs, has said that reducing waste by moving to a circular economy is a top five priority for her department.
But Creagh says decisions will not be made until the Taskforce (set up last summer) provides the Secretary of State (Steve Reid MP) advice on how to develop a Circular Economy Strategy, and a series of roadmaps suggesting interventions the government might make on waste reduction are developed on a sector-by-sector basis.
No timetable on the Taskforce’s report has been made public.
The British Government committed to scrapping the universally discredited T8 exemption several years ago.
Peter Taylor OBE, Secretary General of the TRA, says, 'Tyres are one of the most prevalent and complex chemical products we use every day. The electric car revolution is making them bigger and heavier. For those of us fighting our industry’s corner, it is perverse to await a Taskforce report when the challenges can so immediately be overcome. Tyres burn while the government fiddles.'
