That’s around 40 million tyres every year!
Responsible tyre retailers, such as JAX Tyres, dispose of their waste tyres through legitimate means, in JAX Tyres’ case via its partnership with Australia’s premier tyre recycling specialist, Tyrecycle.
But many more waste tyres are collected by unscrupulous operators where they go often into long term storage or get dumped in landfill, get left illegally in temporarily rented warehouses and fields, or are even shipped offshore to South East Asia and China, where they are left to rot.
Australia has the dubious honour of hosting the world’s largest tyre dump, in Stawell (Victoria), where more than nine million tyres await an uncertain fate … creating a potential fire hazard that could take years to put out.
The NSW Fire & Rescue Service estimates it attends an average of one tyre fire per week somewhere in the State.
Dumped tyres also create health risks to the community, as breeding grounds for mosquitoes and potentially contribute to an increase in Dengue Fever and Ross River Virus, while the constituent chemical toxins within these waste tyres impact have a negative environmental impact on nearby flora and fauna.
Tyrecycle was established in 1992 as a national resource for the recovery and recycling of waste tyres, to stop them entering landfill.
It’s developed a process to separate the tyre’s construction components, with the rubber granulated and powdered to provide the basis of new products such as sports and playground surfaces, road construction base and traffic management infrastructure, landscaping materials and even new tyres, fuel for energy recovery and brake pads.
“If every waste tyre in Australia annually was recycled rather than just some and the rest dumped, it’s estimated that this would reduce CO2 emissions by 3.3 megatonnes,” JAX Tyres CEO Jeff Board says.
“The disposal of waste tyres is certainly the biggest environmental issue facing our industry right now, and we all need to take an active role in promoting recycling as the only alternative for waste tyres.
“JAX has strengthened its commitment to tyre recycling via its new partnership with Tyrecycle.”
