3 Environmental and social issues arising from current disposal/end-uses
3.1 Environmental issues
Environmental impacts from tyre use appear at all stages of the product life cycle, from the mining of resources (eg, crude oil), production (eg, energy use or hazardous waste), use (eg, generation of noise, impact of energy efficiency of the vehicles or rubber loss), through to collection, processing and disposal of EoL tyres. As discussed in Section 1.2, this study focuses on the EoL impacts of tyres. The key environmental issues are both operationally based (including landfill space issues, contaminated leachate and visual pollution) and risk based (including fire risks).
Key environmental issues related to disposal of tyres in landfills or illegal dumps include the following.
- Land use - whole tyres are not easily compactable and therefore use a lot of landfill space. The elasticity of the material also causes the tyres to move within waste causing instability of the landfill sites and hindering any future reclamation. Whole tyres create void spaces within the landfill and these can harbour insects. Shredded tyres are preferable to whole tyres and the latter are prohibited at many North Island landfill.
- Fires - tyres are flammable and fires of tyre stockpiles are very difficult to extinguish. There are cases of tyre fires that have cost authorities nearly $100,000 in direct costs and pollution management. These fires also release large amounts of toxic materials into the air and water.
- Heavy metals leachate - tyres contain steel and various additives which can cause toxic leachate from landfill or from other end-use of tyres (eg, when used for drainage). The leachate characteristics of tyres were recently reviewed by MWH. [MWH July 2004. End of Life Tyre Management: Storage Options.] The results show that, depending on the whether the tyres' steel components are exposed, there may be elevated manganese and iron levels within the leachate. Other contaminants, including aluminium, zinc, and organic compounds, were not elevated to any significant level. All of the leachate contaminant levels were considered "safe" (below relevant environmental standards). These results are, however, based on both field and laboratory investigations and cannot be directly related to specific sites - the risk of groundwater and soil contamination will be determined by a myriad of different factors including exposure (for example, chipped tyres will expose more steel than whole tyres), how the tyres are stacked, any leachate control systems (for example, in engineered landfills), distance to groundwater, permeability and chemistry of the soil and contact time with water.
- Resource recovery - tyres represent a significant amount of "embodied energy" and materials. It is therefore, from an eco-efficiency perspective, critical that we seriously consider alternative uses for EoL tyres.
- Visual pollution and pest control - stockpiles of tyres cause visual pollution and create a habitat for various pests, in particular insects and vermin.
3.2 Socio-economic and regulatory issues
Use of tyres is directly related to the use of cars, and therefore one of the key social issues related to tyres is dependency on cars for access to education, jobs and amenities. In proportion to the purchase price of a tyre, and indeed of a car, the cost of disposal is quite minor and it is assumed it would not have an impact on the decision to own a car or what tyres to buy - used or new.
The economic cost of illegal tyre dumping is a significant issue. According to a previous study, [Firecone. 2004. Management of End-of-life Tyres.] the fines and enforcement for illegal tyre dumping are inadequate. Tyre dumping is illegal under Section 15 of the Litter Act. The maximum fine is $500 for an individual and $2,000 for a corporate. However, this does not discourage dumping of tyres, especially when the cost of legal disposal can be significantly above these fines, depending on the number of tyres. (Note that the fines that can be imposed under the Litter Act are currently being reviewed) As described in Section 2, there is already a reported incident of a landowner paying $100,000 for legal disposal of tyres dumped on his property.
Tyre dumping could also be legislated for under the Resource Management Act (1991). This would require, however, the local council to establish a rule in the district plan preventing unauthorised tyre piles. There are numerous provisions within the Act to control where solid wastes can, and cannot, be stored.
Finally, the Local Government Act (Part 8) allows local authorities to make bylaws to protect the public from nuisance and to maintain public health and safety. This provision could readily cover unauthorised tyre dumping and size and nature of tyre piles. To our knowledge, tyre dumping is not currently regulated under either the Resource Management or Local Government Acts. There are incidences where the local council have used fire prevention bylaws to insist on a tyre pile being removed. Both the Resource Management and Local Government Acts apply to the property owners rather than potential tyre "dumpers" and would therefore not necessarily act as a deterrent to tyre dumping.
The figure below presents the current costs of disposal and collection of tyres in New Zealand.
Figure 3-1: Current cost of disposal and collection of tyres in New Zealand
Text description of figure:
Customers generally pay about $2 - $5 per tyre for disposal. A collector is then paid about $1.50 to $3 per tyre by the retailer. The collector will then dispose of tyres to landfills for about 70cents – $3 per tyre, or be paid as much as $1 per tyre by a farmer.
The Collectors Interest Group estimates that, for the collection business to be economic, 30% of tyres would need to be recycled. The reasoning for this figure is uncertain as the collectors should be dependent on the differential between what they charge the retailer and what they are charged by the landfill operators, rather than the absolute charge or the percentage recycling rate. In reality, a large number of customers (especially in rural areas) are opposed to paying disposal fees. Instead, they prefer to find an alternative for disposing of their tyres. Even in the municipal areas $5 is considered the highest fee that the customers would be willing to pay. Consequently, retailers operating in the highly competitive tyre sales environment are not willing to impose that fee. This situation could change if the awareness of the "tyre problem" was higher and the need to pay the disposal fee was widely understood.
