A decision by the UK’s shredder-operating companies to ban tyres from their plants has caused an increase in the tonneage of tyres being sent for recovery, according to the Environment Agency. The British Metals Recycling Association said the 16 firms had made the decision before the imminent ban on landfilling shredded tyres, due to come into effect on 16 July. The association’s director-general, Lindsay Millington, said that, in the past, it had been happy to accept end-of-life vehicles with tyres, as they were simple to dispose of. ‘However, we are in the business of recycling metal, and we are now telling people to remove tyres, which is something they have technically always had to do.’ Nearly one-quarter of tyres came from ELVs in 2004. An Environment Agency spokesman said the BMRA’s decision, announced last week, had already caused a ‘slight increase’ in the number of tyres being routed through the recovery infrastructure. He claimed there was ‘broadly enough capacity to deal with the number of tyres that will be excluded from landfill, but we recognise capacity may not be local to all areas’. The Environment Agency would not discount an increase in the fly-tipping of tyres when the costs of legally disposing of them increases from 16 July. It plans to focus resources on tackling the large-scale, organised illegal dumping of tyres, leaving waste collection authorities to deal with more localised fly-tipping. The Waste and Resources Action Programme is currently inviting applications for financial support towards the costs of plant, equipment and infrastructure for projects that would increase the recycling – or retreading for their reuse – of used tyres. This runs alongside its efforts to promote the wider use of recycled tyres in, for example, coloured landscape mulch, or cold-lay tyre crumb in ‘micro-asphalt’ on footways. Government statistics show that in 2004, the latest year for which there is data, only 12% of tyre arisings were landfilled. But many tyres are still being stockpiled – some 14M, according to an estimate in a WRAP report. : www.wrap.org.uk/materials/tyres