TRA alert over scrap tire dangers in India

London – The UK’s Tyre Recovery Association (TRA) has welcomed a call by Indian campaigning body Social Action and Environment Group (SAPE) to ban dangerous forms of tire reprocessing in India.

Exports of waste tires, particularly to India “have grown exponentially in recent years to the point where they are seriously undermining domestic recovery capacity both in the UK and elsewhere,” said a 30 Sept TRA release.

SAPE, it noted, claims that well over 40% of India’s known pyrolysis units are non-compliant even with the country’s own environmental standards.

The TRA is, therefore, urging the UK and other Western governments press authorities in the Indian sub-continent and in south east Asia to ramp up enforcement efforts and eliminate bad and dangerous working practices.

“Exports of waste tires should also be more stringently regulated at home as well as abroad in order to better protect our domestic recovery infrastructures as well as to improve working and environmental standards everywhere,” the statement added.

End-of-life tires “remain a valuable resource containing many useful recyclates and other materials, which deserve, to be better valorised,” the association emphasised.

“Industry alone cannot solve this issue, western governments and those in recipient countries need to better co-ordinate their enforcement activities to ensure that wastes such as tires are recycled and reprocessed by optimal means,” said the TRA,

 This, it pointed out, “is more than possible, many better technologies for doing this already exist commercially.”

Over the coming weeks, TRA members will meet to explore ways in which all the key players can work together to bring about stable and environmentally better approaches to the management of tire waste streams.