Used Car Tyre Clean Ups

Since 2015 the TCT has run six tyre cleanup events, collecting, cleaning and recycling 3700 tyres that were inappropriately stored or illegally dumped at six sites around the state. Although we progressed very slowly from 2015 to 2017, in 2018 we accelerated rapidly and collected 1520 used tyres from three locations in the northeast. This was thanks to a grant from NorthernTasmania Waste Management Group (NTWMG) and ongoing discounted collection by Barwicks and Tyre Cycle.

 In 2018 we paid for the collection of tyres from landowners at Pipers River and Longford who had collected and cleaned all their tyres themselves (420 and 300 respectively). This was a massive effort and a very positive development as all previous cleanups involved the TCT staff and volunteers doing all the cleaning. In rural areas volunteers are very hard to obtain so having self-reliant land owners meant the funds stretched further and we had less work to do. A property at Liffey had a much larger number of tyres, 800, and the owner was less physically able. But the owner used their front end loader to collect the tyres that were spread all around the property being used as tree guards. The TCT then paid for the Conservation Volunteers Australia to work with us over two days to clean the tyres.

Over the last four years we have learnt a lot about the problem of used car tyres. Even though there may be several hundred thousand inappropriately stored car tyres across the state, I believe we can eradicate them and stop the problem from reoccurring. We aim to apply for funding from the Tasmanian Community Fund to expand the program by ten-fold. More on that later but first, what we learnt that gives me confidence we can fix this waste problem.

What we have learnt

There are some clear patterns regarding the properties that accumulate tyres and the people who want to remove them. Two of the properties where clean-ups occurred in 2018 were recently purchased and the owners didn’t discover the full extent of the problem until they bought the property. This got me thinking: Is there a way of requiring real estate agents to inform potential buyers of the presence of tyres? I have been informed that this is possible if a complaint has been registered with the local council.

When asked, most landowners want to get rid of tyres but a few have refused and one resorted to burying them. Most just need encouragement and help with cleaning and the disposal cost. Most land owners say they want to remove tyres because of the fire hazard and that they are unsightly.

There are a lot of equestrian centres and schools that use used car tyres (and we have cleaned up tyres on each). These will be a priority for future clean up events and schools in particular can be expected to be concerned about the fire hazard.

Several of the properties we have cleaned up have involved tyres that came from back yard mechanics. We have approached another property owner who openly admitted his local mechanic has given him more than one thousand used tyres that he uses for windbreaks. Using tyres for this purpose is an offense against new state regulations but it would be better if the mechanic was encouraged or required to dispose of the tyres in a more appropriate way.

A number of farmers have reported that they have one thousand or more tyres that they use to weigh down plastic covering silage. Silage gets mechanically wrapped now so tyres are not needed.

Surprisingly, at the start of the NTWMG project, we struggled to find landowners who wanted to remove tyres, despite offering to pay the total cost of disposal and to help with cleaning. We were lucky to get good radio coverage of the Liffey cleanup and then very prominent coverage of the Longford cleanup in the Examiner. This led to a small flurry of reports which abruptly stopped. Clearly, we need to constantly advertise for tyres to keep reports coming in.

With all our media statements we have been discouraging inappropriate use and storage of used tyres and had no push back which is encouraging.

Illegal dumping in reserves and other public land does not seem to be as big a problem as we anticipated. Most tyres that we have had reported are on private land.

In 2017 the state government established new regulations governing the reuse, storage, and disposal of used tyres. This has enabled us to tell people that they have a legal obligation to remove car tyres on their property. While the regulations are probably one reason we are getting more people wanting to remove tyres, they may deter other people who fear prosecution, particularly those with very large quantities. We will be encouraging the EPA to focus on educating the public about the need to stop accumulating tyres and to work towards incentives to assist with safe disposal before they actively enforce the regulations.

Collecting car tyres is generally the easy part. Cleaning them can be very hard. Where tyres have been buried or used on farms for many years they are nearly full of soil and it is very time- consuming to clean them inside and out. This has made it difficult to get volunteers or encourage landowners to clean them. We intend to get clarification from the EPA about how clean tyres need to be for recycling in order to meet our biosecurity obligations, which could increase our efficiency.

Some landowners do amazing work when given the incentive of low cost or free disposal and we aim to identify more of these self-motivated landowners.

The Pipers River landowner used a high-pressure hose and placed the tyres on a gig which increased his efficiency and saved his back. We will investigate this option but it does raise additional safety issues, requires an outlay for the cleaners and would use much more water.

To encourage more volunteers we need to package the task as ‘achievable’, once only and rewarding. Most tyres are in rural towns and outlining suburbs and each community may only need to clean up 500 to a 1000 each and it is largely a once-only job.

We get a number of people contact us about disposal of small quantities of tyres. Given that Barwicks prefer to collect large quantities we would like to tell people which waste transfer stations recycle tyres but none currently advertise this.

Scaling up the tyre cleanups

There are probably hundreds of thousands of used tyres across Tasmania, inappropriately used, stored or dumped. Most people probably think this is just too big a problem to fix. We are currently only touching the surface of the problem but hope to scale up with sufficient funding and better organization.

The TCT has prepared an application to the Tasmanian Community Fund to expand the Tas Tyre Cleanup Program to about ten times the current scale, aiming to collect, clean and recycle 12,000 used tyres in the first year. We have secured letters of support from the Environment Protection Authority, Hobart City Council and the Waste Management Association of Australia. We are not just seeking more money to collect more tyres we will work much more strategically and efficiently. In addition to cleaning up 12,000 used car tyres our selves, the program will: 

•   solicit other organizations to take responsibility and to clean up car tyres on their land: in particular seeking partnerships with equestrian clubs and schools;

•   better promotion of regulatory requirements in relation to car tyre reuse, storage, and disposal: in particular mechanics and real estate agents;

•   educating the community about the need to responsibly dispose of used tyres in order to stop the problem from reoccurring;

•   we will make tyre cleaning more efficient so we can clean up more with the limited resources available to us.

Peter McGlone

TCT Director

Photo of 800 used car tyre at Liffey clean up site by Heather Cassidy