South Africa gears up for waste tyre levy
Tyre manufacturers, transporters, dealers and processers in South Africa have until January 31 to register for the Recycling and Economic Development Initiative (REDISA) Waste Tyre Management Plan, which was approved by the country’s Department of Water and Environmental Affairs in November 2011. Registration is compulsory and is required for calculating a new levy intended to cover the cost of end of life tyres. The levy will take effect as of 1 February 2012.
REDISA has been introduced to deal with the more than ten million scrap tyres generated in South Africa each year. The people behind REDISA state the country is currently home to an estimated 60 million scrap tyres, and the plan’s aim is to remove these tyres from the environment. This is where the levy comes in – REDISA says it will subsidise the collection and recycling process by attaching a value to scrap tyres. The logic is that once these items have a value, individuals and small entrepreneurs will seek out and remove tyres from their communities and deliver then to a collection point.
At present South Africa’s tyre collection depot and recycling infrastructure is insufficiently developed to accommodate the quantities of tyres expected through the REDISA plan. These facilities will, says REDISA, be established and part of the cost of the REDISA plan will be devoted to the training and support of these small and medium-sized enterprises. REDISA estimates the plan will create around 15,000 jobs, including 5,000 existing – and mostly illegal – positions that will be drawn into the plan.
Funding of the plan is through a R2.30 (£0.19) per kilogram levy on tyres manufactured in or imported into South Africa. It is, as may be expected, not without its critics. South African Tyre Recycling Programme (SATRP) chairman Riaan van Niekerk opines that the REDISA plan stifles competition and allows for a monopoly; the plan, he says, is “written in a way that means there is only one plan.” Van Niekerk comments that “two or three plans is good for competition” and claims that REDISA CEO Hermann Erdmann “wants a monopoly so that he can set his own prices.” Mr. Erdmann replied that the REDISA plan does not rule out other plans – and added that it was disingenuous for the tyre industry to complain of monopoly when South Africa’s Competition Commission had uncovered a cartel in the tyre manufacturing industry in 2010.
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