WRAP to Hold Used Tyre Meeting

The Waste and Resource Action Programme (WRAP) is to hold its first formal stakeholder meeting to consider work on the recycling of waste tyres next month. According to a letsrecycle.com report, the market development organisation is expected to use some of its £4 million funding from Defra’s Business Resource Efficiency and Waste (BREW) programme to further work on tyres.

At its last meeting the Used Tyres Working Group heard that “funding for the tyres programme, which should be up and running from April 2005, is likely to be quite substantial.” Of the 435,000 tonnes of used tyres that arose in 2004, it is thought that about 80 per cent were diverted from landfill. Tyre Recovery Association secretary, Peter Taylor, believes this figure could increase to 90 per cent this year.

“Although the UK is likely to divert up to 90 per cent of its tyres from landfill this year, there is room to diversify markets and seek ever increasingly beneficial forms of recovery. If one of the major recyclers went bust it would leave a big hole in the market,” Mr Taylor was quoted as saying.

David Wilson, director of the Retread Manufacturers Association will also be attending the WRAP meeting next month. Although the purchase of retreaded tyres in the UK has fallen in recent years from about 7 million tyres to just 1 million each year. Mr Wilson added that retreading should be of “primary importance” to WRAP.

“We’re not sure what WRAP will put its money towards, we are expecting to find this out at the meeting. We have some proposals for work we would like to carry out that we are lacking funding for. There needs to be more marketing of using retreaded tyres to the public, as this is clearly the green alternative,” said Mr Wilson.