Waste Tyres: A Problem Or A Resource?

Waste tyres are a problem around the world. The prominence given to dealing with the problem varies, depending upon the local conditions. So, on searching for news on illegal tyre dumping, we will find it is accepted that tyre disposal is recognised as a problem in all the leading, or developed, economies.

The USA, Britain, Germany, New Zealand and Australia amongst others, all have severe problems with disposing of waste tyres. In many third world countries there is less of a problem, possibly due to a lower level of use, to lower environmental awareness, and, partly to economic pressures in “catching up” on the developed world. In the race to catch up many developing nations feel they have the right to use the same freedom from environmental restrictions that were enjoyed in the developed nations during the first 200 years of the industrial revolution.

It is difficult for them to look at the USA or Europe and see what we have lost and compare it to what they have yet to lose. It might be argued that the burden of dealing with the environmental problems in the developing nations is possibly a problem which ought to be carried by the leading economies, rather than by the embryonic economies around the world.Whoever carries the cost, we must surely recognise that the tyre industry has a duty to ensure that the products created have as efficient a life span as possible.

The production and the ultimate destruction of the tyres created must also be as efficient and as least damaging to the environment as is feasible. Right now, the leading nations are taking steps to address the problem of waste tyres. The biggest single step is the ultimate banning in landfill of waste tyres.

However, this in turn, creates other problems for the tyre industry. If we produce millions of waste tyres every year, they will all, one day, have to be disposed of. It is estimated that some 21% of these tyres currently get landfilled.

They get landfilled because there are no other uses for these tyres. If there are no other uses and the tyres can no longer be landfilled, what do we do with them?Alternative uses for old tyres would indubitably be more beneficial and more economic in the long-term. The environmental lobbyists at Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace continually scream that recycling old tyres as retreads is a far better option than burying or burning.

However, there are problems associated with that too. The obvious one is that there is an insufficient market for retreaded tyres. The industry could doubtless remanufacture as many tyres as it could get its hands on, but where are they going to be sold? Instead of having massive stockpiles of old tyres, we end up with massive stockpiles of retreaded tyres no-one wants to buy.

And in today’s Just-In-Time economy, no manufacturer wants to stockpile unwanted goods. So that is not a real solution to the problem. Then, again, there is the reality of retreading.

That it is only extending the life of the tyre, and, at the end of the day, it will still need to be disposed of. Retreading could reduce the number of new tyres manufactured and extend the lifespan of a tyre carcass, reducing the demand for raw materials – which most would argue is a good thing. The producers of the raw materials in South East Asia and the oil producing companies might disagree.

So we need to find other uses for the end product. Turn the waste tyre into a raw material which can be “mined” to create a new product. This is not a new idea, and there are a number of possibilities available.

Each though has its own costs and benefits which must, in turn, be considered. Sometimes the obvious options turn out to be less acceptable than we might expect..