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Nineteen years ago this May the
Honourable R. F. Nixon - then provincial Treasurer in the
Peterson Liberal Government - introduced a $5 tire tax in
Ontario. The tax was supposed to, "… help fund efforts to
support recycling and environmentally sound disposal."
Just nine months later in February of 1990 a 14 million tire
stockpile in Hagersville, Ontario burned.
Despite this dramatic event by the time the Bob Rae NDP
Government repealed the tire tax in 1993 the province had
accrued over $150 million in revenue from the tire tax yet had
only spent less than one-tenth of that amount on promoting scrap
tire recovery and recycling. Upon repealing the tax then Finance
Minister Bud Wildman stated that, "What the industry said is
quite true, that the whole amount was not used for recycling and
for new technologies related to rubber. The revenues, of course,
went to the consolidated revenue fund…"
While several other Canadian jurisdictions took the approach of
establishing provincial tire collection programs (B.C. in 1991,
Alberta in 1992 and Quebec in 1993) successive Ontario
Governments have chosen to reduce tire stockpiles by enforcing
landowner clean up of existing tire piles and enforcement
against the formation of new ones.
Unlike virtually every other consumer product (except maybe beer
bottles) tire consumers leave their used product at the location
where they buy their new tires. Tire dealers typically charge a
fee - of which nothing accrues to the government - on each scrap
tire left with them after a tire change to cover the costs of
accepting, handling and storing scrap tires and to pay scrap
tire collectors to collect, sort and finally haul scrap tires to
legitimate end markets.
The Ontario scrap tire collection system works well - there are
no significant tire stockpiles left in Ontario and 95% of the 12
million or so scrap tires currently generated in the province
annually are diverted away from stockpiles.
Nonetheless, to virtually eliminate even the small number of
tires that find their way into stockpiles, scrap tire collectors
should be accredited and approved by the Government of Ontario
to be eligible to collect tires. By extension tire dealers
should be required to enter into commercial arrangements only
with accredited collectors. Records regarding the pickup,
transport and deliveries of scrap tires to end markets should be
available for scrutiny by the Ontario Ministry of Environment.
But there is a much more pressing issue scrap tire issue in
Ontario than a few dumped tires. Even when scrap tires are
collected and delivered to "legitimate" end-uses, these end-uses
are often less than environmentally optimal and in some cases
environmentally deleterious.
In the face of the rising price of oil energy thirsty
manufacturing processes are constantly searching for cheap
fuels.
The synthetic rubber in tires is manufactured from crude oil -
as a result a single tire contains 25% more energy than its
equivalent weight in coal. Producing cement in a cement kiln by
burning scrap tires rather than natural gas saves well over $20
for each tonne of cement produced (though this does not account
for the environmental cost of the associated increase in
pollution). So it's not surprising that industrial boilers and
cement kilns in Quebec and the United States willingly receive
scrap tires in lieu of buying conventional fuels. Almost half
the tires generated annually in Ontario are shipped
out-of-province for burning as industrial fuel.
However, what this means is that a number of Ontario rubber
recycling companies that produce value-added products (e.g.
automotive moldings, blast mats, playground surfacing.
rubberized asphalt. roof shingles etc.) are struggling. Their
value-added and environmentally superior products are inherently
more costly to produce than simply sending scrap tires up in
smoke.
Complicating matters is the fact that a cement kiln in Bath,
Ontario has recently been granted an approval by the Ontario
Government to burn tires. While the approval is facing a legal
challenge if it is ultimately upheld it will mean that the flow
of tires out of Ontario for burning will be redirected to
burning in Bath, Ontario. With other cement kilns following suit
it is likely that in the absence of a system to promote scrap
tire recycling burning tires will quickly become the predominant
form of scrap management in the province.
In this regard Ontario needs to establish a tire recycling fund
that will be used to provide a system of consumer-based
buy-recycled rebates for products containing recycled rubber as
well as funding rubber recycling research and development.
As an example of how such a rebate system would work an
automobile manufacturer using rubber components manufactured
with recycled content would be eligible for a rebate on their
purchases based on the recycled content of the product in
question.
The tire recycling fund and the system for registering tire
collectors and tracking the flow of collected tires should be
established by tire manufacturers or "brand-owners" and by tire
importers if they bring in tires on behalf of brand-owners. This
system of "extended producer responsibility" for promoting
rubber recycling will compliment Ontario's existing high tire
collection rate ensuring both high rates of scrap tire
collection and recycling.
In 2005 a proposal by tire manufacturers and big box retailers
would have seen the current province wide system for tire
collection suspended in favor of a centralized system for
funding the collection and processing of tires and clean up of
the few existing stockpiles. This system was to be funded by a
$4/tire point-of-sale fee on new tires. The plan was publicly
rejected by the Premier of Ontario as a tax, was confirmed by
Ontario Government lawyers as such and was subsequently shelved.
Certainly Ontario doesn't need to reinvent the wheel with regard
to scrap tire collection nor does it need a new $5/tire tire fee
or tax (such as that in British Columbia). With the existing
collection system and modest annual investments by tire
manufacturers to promote recycling, Ontario could easily
establish the most environmentally and cost effective scrap tire
collection and recycling system in Canada.
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