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Tag: Recycling

  • Are Waste Tyres From The UK Causing An Issue In India?

    In the first half of FY25 alone, India exported tyres valued at over ₹12,000 crores.

    With an annual production of almost 20 crore tyres, India is one of the biggest tyre-manufacturing countries in the world. Additionally, the business is supported by both domestic and foreign demand for tyres. Do you know where the majority of them end up? In terms of value, about 15% of India’s tyre exports come from the United States. Closely behind are France, Italy, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, and Brazil. Additionally, Colombia is its largest customer in South America for motorcycle tyres.

    Here’s the catch, though. Many Western countries offer India their worn, end-of-life tyres (ELTs) in exchange for the new tyres it sells.

    In essence, these ELTs are now rubbish that is being transferred to India for recycling. To put it mildly, their sheer bulk is astounding. To put this into perspective, 800,000 tonnes of scrap tyres were sent to India in 2023 alone. Another disturbing statistic is this one. More than 30% of the world’s discarded tyres are bought in India. I’ll address the reason a bit later in the narrative if you’re curious.

    However, the fact that over half of the tyre waste sent to India originates in the UK is upsetting environmental communities and tyre organisations in both India and the UK. Additionally, the amount of pollution being produced is concerning.

    You ask, how is that?

    As you can see, the purpose of this tyre debris that ends up in India is recycling, and tyres undergo a significant change when processed correctly.

    Consider steel, for example. It makes up roughly 20% of a tyre. After extraction, it is cleaned and shipped to smelters, where it is reused in manufacturing and construction. Next, there are fibre and nylon, which account for around 15% of the mixture and are utilized in carpets, fibreglass, and cleanup products like oil spill mats and absorbent pads.

    The majority of the remainder is rubber. However, that also doesn’t go to waste. In controlled industrial settings, some of it is converted into tyre-derived fuel (TDF), which is made from shredded scrap tyres and used in addition to conventional flames. Then there is crumb rubber, which is used for speed bumps, road surfaces, and athletic tracks, and rubber mulch, which is popular for gardens and playgrounds. Further processing turns it into rubber powder, a high-performing substance utilised in sealants, plastics, and even brand-new rubber goods.

    In other words, almost every component of a recycled tyre finds a new home and a practical use.

    But the issue arises when these ELTs—particularly those from the UK—find their way into illegal pyrolysis facilities all around India.

    To put it simply, pyrolysis is similar to intense cooking. at extract fuel and other byproducts, tyres are burned at about 500°C in an oxygen-free environment. However, if done incorrectly, it becomes a catastrophe for the ecosystem. These artificial plants emit a variety of pollutants, including furans, dioxins, benzene, and heavy metals, many of which are extremely carcinogenic. These unlawful setups can be identified by the surrounding contaminated streams, decaying flora, and heavy soot in the air.

    Naturally, the factory owners profit. However, they don’t precisely prioritise public health and environmental issues.

    That raises the issue, though: Why is the UK disposing of its tyre waste in India?

    It’s not as if they don’t have the facilities to recycle tyres at home. They do. But it’s just less expensive to send them elsewhere. The cost of purchasing shredding equipment is high, and Indian pyrolysis facilities are prepared to pay extra for used tyres.

    In the past, scrap tyres were compacted into blocks for drainage beds, embankments, and road foundations in the UK. However, because they are unable to match the pricing offered by Indian recyclers, the businesses producing these blocks have either closed or are having difficulty. The trade is flourishing when you combine this with the growing demand for industrial fuel, low-cost Chinese-made pyrolysis machinery (which would otherwise cost tens of millions of dollars) that can be purchased for as little as $30,000, and lax restrictions.

    The actual kicker is right here. The Basel Convention does not classify tyres as hazardous waste. Therefore, there are very few restrictions on the worldwide tyre trade unless the importing nation expressly forbids them.

    The irony is that, according to a 2021 MoHUA assessment, India currently produces a huge amount of trash tyres—roughly 2,75,000 per day. However, India keep importing millions more, which makes the situation worse.

    The rules in the UK are also absurdly loose. Exporters just list their buyers, and the UK verifies the legitimacy of these buyers with India. However, there is no accountability, no tracking, and no official export data after that.

    In the UK, being a tyre seller is also incredibly simple. Even though used tyres are ostensibly used for building, traders are nonetheless transporting them directly to India; all you need to do is fill out a straightforward “U2 environmental exemption” form and gather them. The UK gets rid of the tyres as soon as they leave British soil.

    However, the Indian government has begun to take harsh measures. The importation of discarded tyres intended for pyrolysis has been prohibited by the Ministry of Environment. Following orders from the National Green Tribunal, the Central Pollution Control Board has already closed 270 unlawful pyrolysis facilities in 19 states. Additionally, a new Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) framework has made tyre producers accountable for the collection and appropriate disposal of discarded tyres, adding still another level of accountability.

    However, the issue still exists in spite of their attempts. The Automotive Tyre Manufacturers’ Association (ATMA), which notes that waste tyre imports have increased fivefold since FY21, is now advocating for a total ban on these imports.

    The UK now bears the responsibility. The situation in India may be managed if the UK adopted Australia’s entire ban on selling these ELTs to other nations.

    The question is whether India will step in before the crisis worsens if this doesn’t occur.

  • Three Reasons Why Recycling Is Failing

    Many people think of recycling as their primary environmental action, yet recycling as it is currently practised does relatively little to mitigate environmental catastrophes like climate change, according to experts who convened last month.

    “To be of benefit, recycling needs to be done well, and our current recycling system is delivering some mixed results, especially as we continue to export contaminated recyclables to countries that lack adequate infrastructure,” said David Allaway, a senior policy analyst with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

    “As a state, we currently recover around 40 percent of our solid waste,” Allaway said, “and if we could bump that up to 90 percent recovery it would reduce climate impacts—but only by about 3 percent.”

    Recycling produces its strongest benefits when it displaces the extraction of materials (like ore or oil) at the beginning of the production process, Allaway said in a webinar hosted by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. It produces additional, though smaller, benefits by reducing emissions from landfills and incinerators and by conserving energy.

    But Recycling is done poorly in the United States, and that’s partly because the American public is confused about what and how to recycle, Allaway said. Their confusion leads to high levels of contamination (such as plastic bags or food-soiled cardboard in recycling bins). The contamination leads to increased costs for themselves, the ratepayers, and the governments who collect the recyclables.

    But the public shouldn’t shoulder the blame, Allaway said, because the ratepayers and governments are effectively subsidizing both the companies that produce the materials and those that purchase them after recycling. That fundamental economic misalignment, he said, contributes to these three root challenges to the success of recycling:

    1 Under-Investment

    The climate and environmental benefits of recycling are not reflected in its economics. “Recycling can reduce costs to society through reducing pollution and climate change, but these benefits are not reflected in the economic signals that industry and local governments are responding to,” Allaway said, “and this leads to an under-investment in recycling.” Consumers and governments are collecting materials for producers who pay much less for them than the cost of collection.

    2 Under-Participation

    Because producers are left out of recycling’s economics, they have less incentive to reconsider packaging or product design. “There is a significant gap in the responsibility involving consumer brands,” Allaway said. “These producers have the unique power to influence changes in packaging and product design and create market demand for recycled materials and reduced price volatility, but they are largely absent from our current policy framework.”

    3 Unchanging Laws

    Many recycling laws were designed 30 to 40 years ago, Allaway said when the economics of recycling was driven largely by the newspaper. Since then, the newspaper has all but disappeared from the waste stream. Waste handling has changed dramatically, and the laws haven’t kept up. “Thirty years ago nobody anticipated that we would mix our recyclables, or that we need processing facilities to sort them out, or that we’d export them to distant lands with less environmental regulation and infrastructure.”

    “We should reduce first,” Allaway said, “and only then recycle.”