Kuwait recycles its tyre waste, and the world ignores it.
Kuwait Tyre Recycling Grows
Just a couple of weeks ago, the Internet was loaded with viral posts about a tyre fire in Kuwait – months after it had actually happened, and generally ignored the fact that these fires are commonplace in most countries. The UK being no exception.
Rather late in the day, the Kuwaiti press has published a range of articles about how Kuwait is now dealing with its 42 million waste tyres. But the world is not interested in positive news.
Tyres are being relocated from the main tyre dumps to a purpose-built tyre processing facility that opened in January 2021. There, they are sorted for export, or domestic recycling. The recycling process takes the tyres and reduces them to crumb to make rubber matting for use on the domestic market.
The tyres have been, or are being, relocated to a new site at Al Salmi, where they will be recycled, and the Kuwaiti government expects to see the construction of another four dedicated tyre recycling plants.
The current plant is operated by Kuwait-based EPSCO Global General Trading.
The Al Khair Group transported more than half of all the tyres to the new site using up to 500 trucks a day and is now planning to open a factory to process the tyres through a pyrolysis process, its CEO Hammoud al-Marri said.
