New standard set in for UK sustainable tire recycling

London – The Tyre Recovery Association (TRA) announced in December that it had added a quality protocol option standard to facilitate the re-use of materials recovered from scrap tires.

The new option, said the UK-based TRA, will accompany the existing publicly available specification (PAS) 107:12 covering the manufacture and storage of size-reduced tire-derived materials.

The announcement added that the quality protocol “identifies the point at which waste, having been fully recovered, may be regarded as a non-waste product that can be used in specified markets without the need for waste-management controls if its criteria are met.”

“As such, this new protocol will remove a significant impediment to the full valorisation and proper recognition of tire-derived materials in the future,” the association added.

The TRA, which manages the UK tire industry’s “responsible recycler scheme” will be the first body able to certify compliance with this new protocol through its existing TRA audit process.

Recycling website letsrecycle.com reported that in order to achieve certification under the scheme, companies must first prove the materials have been produced using only source-segregated waste tires, and that they meet the requirements of PAS 107, engineering standards and any additional requirements specified by the customer.

Companies must also be able to prove the materials were produced using ‘ambient or cryogenic processing technologies’, and have been processed in accordance with a pre-determined size category.