During the recently concluded BIR spring meeting, the focus of the tire session was on the landfilling of tires. Barend Ten Bruggencate of Vaco, The Netherlands, expressed concern over some EU countries’ continuing reliance on landfilling scrap ties. Landfilling remained ‘a big option’ in the UK, Republic of Ireland, Spain, Italy and Greece despite the imminence of the EU ban on the dumping of whole tires, which is due to come into force on July 16, 2003. ‘We are facing big problems as to how this will be implemented,’ he told delegates.
Ten Bruggencate also used the example of Turkey where a recent meeting with the country’s authorities had revealed no coordination between government and industry on a scrap tire collection system. Given the lack of good-quality casings for the retreading industry, landfilling in Turkey was running at ‘almost 100 percent, he said.
The chairman contrasted this situation with news that recovery rates in Norway, Finland, Sweden and The Netherlands were 100 percent. EU-wide tire destination averages for 2001 were 19 percent materials recycling, 22 percent energy recovery, 13 percent retreading, 11 percent reuse/export and 35 percent landfilling.
Ten Bruggencate focused on developments in The Netherlands where, he explained, a law handing responsibility to producers/importers for the entire life of a tire was scheduled for implementation in the fourth quarter of this year. This would entail free-of-charge take-back of scrap tires under a scheme financed by manufacturers/importers according to their individual share of the nation’s 4.8 million tires. The initial fee imposed on the selling price of new tires would be Euro 2, of which 75 cents would go to the material recycler.
A system already adopted in Norway formed the basis of the Tires Committee’s guest presentation in Oslo. Hroar Braathen, dDirector of the non-profit Norwegian tire recycling company Norsk Dekkretur A/S, explained that his country’s government had introduced legislation in 1995 forcing importers and domestic manufacturers to collect and recycle scrap tires in line with their individual sales. A major challenge had been to overcome the country’s length and mountain/fiord geography to achieve high collection rates from rural as well as urban areas, he said.
Until January 1 this year, the fees paid to Norsk Dekkretur in respect of new and retreaded tires had equated to Euro 2 for passenger car tires and to Euro 10 for truck, bus and tractor tires. However, an income surplus had enabled fees to be dropped to Euro 1.25 and Euro 8 respectively since the start of this year.
Around 33,500 metric tons of tires had been amassed from 3,300 dealers and 700 collection points in 2002 - equivalent to a collection rate of 109 percent, Braathen explained. Some were sorted for retreading or for export to Eastern Europe and Africa, while the larger proportion was used either for energy recovery in the cement, electricity and heating industries or for material recycling, including civil engineering applications, horse tracks and sports pitches.