- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
Millions of tyres being sent from the UK to India for recycling are actually being “cooked” in makeshift furnaces causing serious health problems and huge environmental damage, the BBC has discovered.
The majority of the UK’s exported waste tyres are sold into the Indian black market, and this is well known within the industry, BBC File on 4 Investigates has been told.
“I don’t imagine there’s anybody in the industry that doesn’t know it’s happening,” says Elliot Mason, owner of one of the biggest tyre recycling plants in the UK.
Campaigners and many of those in the industry - including the Tyre Recovery Association (TRA) - say the government knows the UK is one of the worst offenders for exporting waste tyres for use in this way.
Sort of. The root issue is that it’s not economical to dispose of tires. They’re designed to be durable, so when they’ve reached the end of their lifetime… what do you do with them? You can’t really reuse them because they leach microplastics and harmful chemicals. Recycling is more expensive than buying new. There’s no clean way to dispose of them at all.
Properly managed, the outputs of tire pyrolysis are syngas, carbon black, and steel. All of those are valuable reclaimed resources.
The idea behind tire recycling fees is to incentivize that sort of reuse that might not be economic on its own.
For more context for the article, there’s this line that I think is pertinent.
“The Indian government has made it illegal for imported tyres to be used for pyrolysis.”
So even if its possible to execute pyrolysis safely, the government doesn’t allow it for imports from the UK.
Yeah, but I’m sure that it costs more to pyrolize than you’d make by selling the products. And I’m sure this facility isn’t properly managed. Thus, corners are cut to make it just profitable enough, laws and environment be damned.