Why do I pay an environmental charge to dispose of my old car tyres?
UK tyres are replaced on average 100,000 times every day and on the 16th July 2006 it became illegal for tyres to be placed in landfill. This obviously leaves a huge problem as to where we are going to put nearly half a million tonnes of used car tyres every year?
Tyres are now recycled into many different things – some of the larger 4×4 tyres can even be remoulded into new tyres. Remoulded tyres are a way of buying cheap tyres as the tyre is essentially stripped back and re-made with new tread. The new tread is attached to the old tyre. Many lorries and some van tyres use re-moulded tyres.
Companies that dispose of tyres have to be registered with the environment agency. Some of the recycled tyres are ground down into crumbs and these crumbs can then be used for sports floors and safety flooring. The costs involved in reducing these tyres to crumbs are still very high. The environmental charge is to cover the costs for the tyre recycling agent to collect the tyres. As you can imagine the garage that supplies your new tyres will need to have the old ones removed at least once a month if not more often as they only have so much room for storage.