“Britain will be the environmental sick man of Europe if government doesn’t act soon to update waste regulations,” according to the Tyre Recovery Association (TRA). Revealing the correspondence underway with the Secretary of State for the Environment and his department, the TRA statement makes public the issues the UK government are reportedly failing to engage with.
With acres of Somerset still underwater following one of the wettest Januarys ever, tyre bales are now being deployed in order to create makeshift roadways. According to a recent BBC news online report, Parts of the area have been flooded throughout January and many residents have to resort to using boats to get around.
R4 Ltd recently launched its first advertising campaign focusing on its environmental services to local businesses and organisations in the Northern Ireland area. According to the company, the campaign debuted on local radio station, with the focus being on how R4’s services make it easier for companies to recycle their vehicle tyres and catalytic converters. R4’s first foray into radio advertising, was produced by a team at the Brownlow Youth Project radio station Xtreme FM.
Cheshire based company BTR Limited has been ordered to pay £10,000 in fines and costs for its involvement in the illegal export of waste tyres to Vietnam. The case, taken by the Environment Agency, is the first ever taken under new regulations controlling the import and export of waste to the UK.
Two new documents released this month by WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) are designed to set new standards in the tyre recycling industry. With over 46 million used tyres generated annually in the UK, the market for developing end uses for tyres is growing fast and these documents aim to set a quality standard for both the manufacturers and end-users of used tyre material. The two Publicly Available Specifications (PAS) documents were created in conjunction with the British Standards Institute (BSI). They provide guidance to the measures and procedures needed to produce recycled material such as shred, crumb, powder and tyre bales, to a consistent grade and quality.
According to WRAP, the PAS documents set out a voluntary specification and will give manufacturers the ability to publicise that their materials are of a high standard, meeting the voluntary guidance criteria. The PAS will provide their customers with the confidence that the materials they are receiving are produced responsibly, in line with an approved procedure. In an industry historically lacking guidelines, the documents promise to be a useful resource.
One of the first houses constructed out of tyres is being built in Nedd, north of Ullapool, Scotland. The project is the brainchild of two green activists, who after seeing tyres compressed into bales used as retaining walls on embankments, decided to ask Inverness-based Northern Tyre Recycling, about the possibility of using the bales for their own homes.
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