Tyre retailers critical of new recycling levy

Ireland is groaning under the weight of hundreds of thousands of illegally disposed tyres, a stockpile that is growing each year. It’s causing a double-cost to the consumer, who already pays an upfront charge at the time of purchasing a tyre so that is can be properly disposed of. As a taxpayer, that same consumer is then funding the recovery and disposal efforts of local councils who have to deal with the massive piles of dumped tyres.

It shouldn't have been like this. Legislation was introduced in 2007 which was supposed to ensure voluntary compliance with waste disposal regulations, either by registering with a central database or with the local council. However, according to Seamus Clancy, chief executive of Repak ELT, the company now charged with solving the waste-tyre crisis, "the 2007 legislation should have been a full Producer Responsibility Initiative (PRI) scheme but it turned out to be a partial scheme and became very watered down. It just didn't suit some of the cohorts in the industry and there was little enforcement".

That is about to change. The old legislation has been scrapped and the Department of Environment, Community and Local Government has brought in a new set of regulations, which will be overseen by Repak ELT, a separate entity to the well-known Repak organisation, which already deals with about 800,000 tonnes of waste and packaging every year.

The new system will see tyre manufacturers pay €2.80 upfront for every tyre they introduce on to the market. This is to cover the costs of recovery and recycling as well as the administration of the scheme.

That €2.80 will be passed to the wholesaler, the retailer and eventually the consumer and, under the new system, will have to be itemised as a separate cost on each invoice, much as with the WEEE regulations on recycling electrical goods.

Recycling

According to Clancy, “consumers are already paying on average between €1.50 and €3 per tyre for recycling charges, but those charges are not then being channelled into recovery and recycling.

What mostly happens is that the retailer pays around 80c per unit to a collection agent who takes the tyres away and then thinks, “I’ve paid someone and I’ve done my bit”. The problem then is that consumers are effectively paying for recycling and collection twice – because their taxes go to cover the cost of dealing with the illegal dumps.”

Clancy expects that the full PRI scheme will be up and running by this time next year, and that Repak ELT will use the next 12 months to complete its data gathering and begin educating both the public and the industry on the need for the scheme.

However, some in the industry have already taken against the concept. The Independent Tyre Wholesalers and Retailers Association (ITWRA) has objected to the scheme as proposed, saying "there is an urgent need for an efficient system to control and handle waste tyres in Ireland. However, the Department has insisted on an option that will unnecessarily cost the Irish motorist in the region of €10 million additional per annum to administrate.

Submissions

“The scheme being adopted by the Department is crazy. Its going to be very expensive to run, and the average Irish car owner and haulage company are going to fund it by paying an additional €3 per car tyre to €30 per tyre for haulage operators to a centrally-run tyre-waste management quango. The ITWRA have made extensive submissions to the Department and to the Minister to show that much more efficient schemes are operating effectively such as the Responsible Recycler Scheme operated by

Peter Taylor

of the

Tyre Recovery Association

in the UK. This organisation handles over 40 million tyres in the UK at a fraction of the cost that it will take to handle Ireland’s tyre waste if the Department implements current proposals.”

Clancy rejects the ITWRA's stance, saying that "there's no extra cost to the consumer at all, as this is replacing the existing ad-hoc charge, which is mostly not being spent on recycling at all. Clearly there will be elements in the industry that do not want this, but the main tyre manufacturers have actually led this process across Europe, such as in Italy where they have a PRI scheme that is one of the best".

Repak ELT estimates that there are as many as 100 illegal tyre dumps around the country. Part of the legislation allows for the creation of local environmental enforcement teams who will assess sites and who can levy penalties for non-compliance. Under the 2007 legislation, those penalties were “quite low and people didn’t take much notice of them”, says Clancy.

Penalties

New, stiffer penalties are currently being worked out by the Department, as well as fees payable for users of larger tyres such as heavy goods vehicles and agricultural machinery.

Repak ELT is also working closely with the Department of the Environment in Northern Ireland, trying to get a handle on the cross-Border traffic of tyres, some of which are not approved for European market use.

In the meantime, the dangers of the existing piles of discarded tyres remains. Although they’re relatively inert, in an environmental sense they can take aeons to decompose and present a serious fire and smoke hazard, especially when the piles are raided around Halloween.

Repak ELT describes them as a “blight on the landscape and a safety issue” and also points out that, across Europe, the evidence shows that the charge for recycling tends to fall over the years, especially as some sectors of other industries have realised the potential value of recycled tyres, both as a source of material and to be burned for energy instead of fossil fuels.

With parts of the tyre supply chain still rebelling over the new legislation though, how long before Ireland’s vast tyre dumps are cleaned up?