The Tyre Recovery Association (TRA) has long emphasised the central importance of legal Duty of Care compliance when dealing with our nation’s waste tyres; failure to do so can be a costly oversight. Contrary to what many seem to believe, that duty begins not at the point of disposal but from the very moment a used tyre is removed from a wheel. In the past, this salient fact has been all too frequently brushed aside by those who generate waste or even properly addressed by our regulators. Now, at last, attitudes seem to be changing.
A very recent press release from the Environment Agency has trumpeted a massive £100,000 fine plus costs imposed on a tyre retailer accused of feeding some 250,000 end-of-life tyres over the course of a year to recovery sites whose two T8 permits allowed for just a fraction of that amount. Facts that the most simple Duty of Care checks would have verified.
Worse still, the retailer in question was found by the Agency to have maintained totally inadequate records in clear breach of statutory regulations.
The TRA has long urged the EA and other regulators to attack poor and illegal practices in the recovery chain from the very obvious start point of when an old tyre is first removed from its wheel; only then will compliance standards across the whole recovery chain be improved and ignorance of the law rightfully rejected as a valid defence. That the Environment Agency has heard our argument is to be commended.
See more at www.tyrerecovery.org.uk
