Best Practice Pays off

Figures just released by Defra show that while the fly-tipping of commercial waste across England continues to rise overall the fly-tipping of end of life tyres has halved over the past 10 years to just over 1% of total reported incidents*.

Peter Taylor, Secretary General of the UK Tyre Recovery Association said “This is a gratifying achievement particularly as it goes against a worrying upward trend in fly-tipping of other waste products. We have worked hard in conjunction with our Environment Agency and other regulators to get tough on waste crime in our sector and in doing so we in the tyre industry have also played our part. In 2003 we launched what was then a ground-breaking and purely voluntary best practice programme known as the Responsible Recycler Scheme to which all our members belong. It provides for the independently audited assurance that TRA members fully meet not just their legal obligations but also adhere to wider best practice standards.

Today, more than 75% of all the UK’s old tyres pass through the hands of TRA members, a still remarkable achievement for a purely voluntary initiative but we have not, achieved it alone.
Apart from concerted action by regulators our many responsible minded retailers and vehicle dismantlers, large and small, have stood alongside us to help get us where we are today”. Taylor continued, “our old tyres may be deemed ‘waste’ but they remain a easily recyclable and valuable resource so even just one fly-tipped tyre is one too many”

*(62,000 total incidents of abandoned commercial waste reported of which just over 1% were waste tyres)

To find out more about TRA’s other initiatives, visit tyrerecovery.org.uk