Tyrecycle Chief Executive Officer Jim Fairweather is calling for increased government procurement and market-based regulation during a parliamentary inquiry into Australia’s tyre industry.
Tyrecycle has made a formal submission to the parliamentary inquiry into the state of Australia’s tyre industry with one clear objective in mind.
“We don’t want a single tyre dumped in Australia,” says Jim Fairweather, Chief Executive Officer at Tyrecycle, which is Australia’s largest collector and recycler of end-of-life tyres. “But collection and schemes are not enough – you must create demand.”
The inquiry was adopted by the Standing Committee on Industry, Innovation and Science, following referrals from the Federal Ministers for Industry and Innovation, and Science, respectively. Its goal is to investigate the Australian tyre industry and identify any challenges and opportunities within it.
Fairweather believes the inquiry poses an opportunity to address what he calls areas for improvement in the industry, while it could also steer conversation towards the economic triggers required to make an economic resource recovery system – the circular economy –
a reality.
“There’s a misconception that markets are created by extended producer responsibility schemes,” Fairweather says. “They’re not.
“Just because you have an element to collect tyres, doesn’t mean you have a way to dispose of them.”
A key component of Tyrecycle’s submission to the inquiry is an emphasis on the ‘demand side’ of the industry, calling for an increase in government procurement of crumb rubber for road construction.
Australia’s road construction sector already consumes about 30,000 tonnes of crumb rubber annually, making it one of the strongest markets for the product globally. Meanwhile, Tyrecycle is advancing a pipeline of more than 100,000 tonnes per annum in domestic tyre-derived fuel (TDF) from end-of-life passenger tyres.
Fairweather says this market-led growth in domestic demand demonstrates that the industry is driving sustainable outcomes for waste tyres and improved market resilience through business-led innovation, without the need for centralised intervention.
However, he also explains that continuous improvement is critical.
“By mandating higher recycled content in asphalt specifications through specific procurement, the Federal Government could create a domestic market five times its current size, reducing the industry’s reliance on exporting TDF,” he says.
Related stories:
- ResourceCo: Building futures
- ResourceCo: Walking the talk on environmental data
- ResourceCo: Never a wasted opportunity
Resource recovery is also integral to Tyrecycle’s submission. Fairweather says Tyrecycle supports a regulated mandatory market-based stewardship approach to the industry. However, he wants that approach to focus on where there is a market failure – off-the-road (OTR) or mining tyres – rather than creating inefficiencies, bureaucracies and unnecessary burden upon the high performing areas of the tyre recycling industry.
While passenger and truck tyres have a 96 per cent collection rate, the OTR sector, which is dominated by mining and agricultural tyres, tells a different story.
OTR tyres represent nearly 30 per cent of Australia’s total tyre waste by weight, but are currently collected at a rate of just two per cent.
Fairweather says the circular economy cannot function effectively while such a large volume of feedstock remains outside the recycling loop.
“If we want to reach national waste targets, then we have to make sure we do something about OTR tyres,” he says. “The practice of allowing landfilling of OTR tyres and in-pit disposal at mines is the most significant regulatory barrier to circular economy outcomes.”
To bridge the gap in the OTR sector, Tyrecycle has proposed the implementation of targeted landfill bans that would act as an immediate trigger to redirect mining and agricultural tyres into the hands of recyclers.
“We have to keep presenting ourselves as an environmentally sound, commercially fair option for our waste generation customers,” Fairweather says. “We also need to continue to prove ourselves as a reliable, high-quality manufacturer of tyre-derived products to our offtake partners.
“If we just keep doing those two things we will eventually win the war for circularity.”
Tyrecycle’s submission also points to the need for better enforcement of existing laws.
Fairweather says rogue operators who export non-compliant, low-quality tyre products often use substandard equipment that cannot mechanically produce export-compliant materials, allowing them to operate at a lower cost than legitimate recyclers.
Tyrecycle is urging the Federal Government to allocate more budget for the enforcement of export regulations to ensure a level playing field.
Ultimately, the inquiry submission is advocating for the establishment of a mandatory, market-based tyre stewardship approach that holds all participants accountable. The Federal Government is being encouraged to provide procurement, while waste generators are being pushed to ensure their disposed tyres go to the legitimate recycling industry so circular economy outcomes can be realised.
“We want to see regulation at the right pace and in the right timeframe to ensure that we can direct so much of that waste into the hands of recyclers,” Fairweather says. “We have to call all waste generators to account and ensure they manage their waste and dispose of it appropriately and environmentally soundly.”
This article was originally published in the May edition of our magazine. To read the magazine, click here.
