Peter Taylor, Secretary General of the Tyre Recovery Association Limited (TRA) in the UK, tells us more about what happens to end-of-life tyres from the UK.
The so-called ‘Waste Hierarchy’ is a concept that will be known to many of you. It is a pyramid, upright or inverted, which describes the stages of beneficial reuse and recycling.
The pyramid should not be too strictly interpreted in our case, but its essential point is valid nevertheless. Reuse is preferable where possible – such as in retreading – followed by valorisation of the used product in all its varying beneficial forms (e.g. energy generation, granulation/products etc.).
In Europe and in the UK, we still have quite a way to go yet as we still remain highly dependent on energy recovery.
Title: Management of End-of-Life Tires in Europe, 2021
Source: Astutus Research
Our old tyres are a very useful source of energy with a high calcific value, similar to that of coal. For this reason, their use as a fuel is a popular expedient across the globe. A sizeable proportion of used tyre arisings ‘managed’ in Europe actually go into kilns and furnaces, particularly in cement production and almost all exported tonnages are similarly used. Here in Britain, we annually export more than 200,000 tonnes of old tyres to be used in this way.
The export of our old tyres is an expedient but not ideal way of exploiting their intrinsic value on two levels, it undermines our own need for domestic resilience in tyre recycling and, also, puts us at the mercy of sometimes wild price variations in export markets which have a knock-on effect here at home by often destabilising our own home marketplace for locally managed recovery and recycling. It can be hugely damaging in another way too as such market instability deters investment in the new products and technologies we strive for.
This, often unrestrained, export of our old tyres also gives rise to other concerns, especially relative to standards of environmental compliance often beyond our control. We, in the TRA, are trying to do something about this, but the government, in particular, remains resolutely unhelpful. Nevertheless, despite often poor levels of enforcement in our own country too, we have made progress as an industry.
Honestly though, it is still not enough, but times are changing. A number of industry players are currently working on commercialising pyrolysis projects, one of which is already up and running. There will soon be more as we make our own contribution to the circular economy by feeding back some of this recovered tyre-derived material not just into innovative new products but into new tyres themselves. In this, we all have a role to play, as the next article in this series will show.
Visit tyrerecovery.org.uk
