WHO Identifies Australian Scrap Tyres as an Asian Health Risk

Australia’s national broadcaster has reported on World Health Organization concerns that the country’s tyre industry and its trade with South East Asia is responsible for health hazards within the region. According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s current affairs programme “The World Today”, some two-thirds of the scrap tyres generated in Australia each year – a quantity equalling 250,000 tonnes – are sent to Asian countries, and the quantity shipped there has tripled in the last 18 months.

Dave West, director of the recycling organisation Boomerang Alliance, was interviewed for the radio programme. “It’s certainly been going on informally, but we are now hearing that it’s between 60 and 65 per cent, which is something like 11 million tyres hitting some of the most ill-equipped nations to be able to deal with the problem,” West stated. “The number of tyres reaching South East Asia and particularly Vietnam has exploded over the last sort of 12 to 18 months.”

Allan Kerr, president of the Australian Tyre Recyclers Association and general manager of Sims TyreCycle, Australia’s largest recycler and processor of waste tyres, commented that a strong demand exists in Asia for tyres to burn as a cheap source of electricity. “Tyre have an inherent fuel value in them,” he said. “I think in short it’s an energy derived demand that is coming out of Asian countries, and effectively shipped in shipping containers from there. The bulk are going to Vietnam as we speak.”

However, as Dave West points out, when tyres are burned they can release persistent organic pollutants like cadmium, lead and acids into the environment. He adds that the connection with the spread of diseases such as dengue fever is also strong. The World Health Organization, West continues, has drawn a number of clear links between the spread of dengue and the export of tyres.

The Australian current affairs programme suggests that the export of tyre waste may violate the international Basal Convention on moving hazardous waste, of which Australia is a signatory. However Silvio De Denaro, secretary of the Australian Tyre Industry Council, an organisation that represents major tyre manufacturers, states that the tyre industry is not responsible. “The tyre industry is actually actively lobbying government to ensure this phenomenon stops because not only it has the potential to damage other countries but also it stifles the growth of local recycling industries,” commented De Denaro. Allan Kerr added that tyre retailers’ involvement in the export of scrap tyres is perhaps unwitting, given that they are being shipped through third parties.