Mississippi DEQ Offering Grants for Tire Recycling

The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality is offering grants to governments and certain manufactures to provide assistance or incentives for the cleanup, removal and recycling or disposal of waste and scrap tires.

This past week the agency awarded grants to Yalobusha County for $20,600; Bolivar County for $45,000; and Alcorn County, $20,000

"There are two waste-tire grant categories," said Charles Chisolm, MDEQ executive director. "One is designed for local governments that need assistance in waste tire collection and cleanup and the other is offered as an incentive program for manufactures that will recycle or produce from the waste tires."

To date, the Commission on Environmental Quality has awarded more than $5 million in grant funds to local governments. These grants are awarded to counties throughout the state to assist them in providing collection and disposal services to persons with small quantities of scrap tires and to cleanup small quantities of illegally dumped tires.

The commission has also awarded over $4 million in grants to private companies, universities and others to develop new products from waste tires. MDEQ recently awarded two incentive recycling grants to companies in Jackson and Vicksburg that will manufacture products from waste tires. Additional grants were awarded to Hinds County, Claiborne County and to the Northwest Rankin Athletic Association to conduct demonstration projects utilizing waste tire derived materials.

MDEQ has invested nearly $2 million to remove and dispose of approximately 2.8 million tires from more than 75 sites throughout the state. In the past year, MDEQ has spent approximately $190,000 cleaning up nine illegal tire dumps in the state, removing roughly 150,000 waste tires from these sites for recycling and disposal.