FEATURE
The company says a third of its Marathon tyres’ puncture protection belt is made from recycled products. Dave Taylor, Schwalbe UK’s marketing manager, told BikeBiz he believes tyre recycling is something the industry needs to look into as a whole. Managing end of life tyres at a national level: the options EU legislation banned the landfilling of whole tyres in 2003, and shredded tyres in 2006. However, this directive excludes bicycle tyres. Tyre waste is problematic because of the durable and non-biodegradable nature of materials. While there isn’t an established recycling market for bike tyres in the UK, there is a market for car tyre recycling, which hints there may be a recoverable value from bike tyres. Between 1994 and 2010, the EU increased the number of car tyres recycled from 25 per cent to nearly 95 per cent, with roughly half of end-of-life tyres used as combustible fuel in, for example, cement kilns. The other half is material recovery, where tyres are shredded for use in anything from shock absorbing playground mats, to moulded rubber products like wheels for bins, to gravel replacements, to roads. There are three European national models relating to car tyre recycling: • ‘Producer Responsibility’ scheme (PR) where tyre producers collectively finance tyre recovery. Here, not-for-profit companies, financed by tyre 40 | May 2018
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producers, manage collection and recovery of end-of-life tyres, reporting at the end of each year to the national authorities. The European Tyre and Rubber Manufacturers’ Association (ETRMA) estimates the annual investment in R&D at around €5 million per system. The ETRMA says: “Producer responsibility achieves more robust results than the purely market-driven approach”. A ‘free market’ system, as in the UK. Here, legislation sets recycling objectives but doesn’t designate responsibility, so individual operators deal with recycling or disposal as they see fit, within the legislation. Cooperation between companies is possible but voluntary. A government-responsibility tax scheme. Financed by a levy on tyre production, passed on to the customer, the government is responsible for organising and funding operators in the recovery chain.
The ETRMA says that, because of growing pressure from the public on the environmental impact of tyre waste, “it is in the interests of the tyre industry to continue being proactive and take responsibility collectively for end of life tyres”. In its 2011 report on tyre recycling in Europe it states: “The remarkable progress that has been achieved is due largely to the proactive attitude of the profession.” There is also a recycling scheme in Canada, in British Columbia, supported by the Bicycle Trade Association of Canada and Tire Stewardship BC., which disposes of bike tyres free of charge to customers and bike shops. www.bikebiz.com
24/04/2018 14:40