Have you ever looked at the number of vehicles on the road, and the endless mechanics dotted up and down the country, and wondered what it all means in terms of tyre production and waste?
The reality is that Britain and the UK is one of Europe’s largest users of tyres – due in no small part to our commercial transport industry, the growing industrial and agricultural sectors, and to the extensive reliance of Brits on domestic cars.
But what does this all look like in terms of numbers?
The Number of New Tyres Used Every Year
Let’s start with the number of new tyres that are supplied and fitted every year, to the UK’s plethora of vehicles – including cars, buses, trucks, vans, and machinery for varying industrial uses.
It is estimated that around 50 million new tyres are fitted across the UK every year.
How Much Tyre Waste is Produced Every Year?
Around 500,000 tonnes of waste tyres are disposed of across the UK every year – spanning all manner of vehicle types. This is the weight equivalent of between 50 and 60 million car tyres being disposed of every year, though as a proportion of these tyres will come from bigger vehicles and carry a heavier weight, we cannot say for certain how many individual tyres form part of that 500,000 tonne load.
But where does the waste go – and how can we make tyre disposal as sustainable as possible?
Where Does Tyre Waste Go?
The difficulty with modern tyres is that the process they go through to add strength and stability, known as vulcanisation, means that tyres can’t be melted down and reformed to produce new tyres.
Rather, tyres need to be broken down in their existing solid state and used as rubber chipping or used inventively for other applications. Some of the most common uses for used and disposed-of tyres include turning rubber chippings into playground and race track surfaces, using the tyres to make silage on farms, and reinventing them for use in gardens as planters.
