European Recycling Industries’ Confederation (EuRIC) represents a cross section of the recycling industry in Europe and the 8th Recyclers’ Talk in Brussels on the 18th April, will discuss the tyre recycling sector in Europe.
The tyre recycling industry has been driven since the 2006 Landfill Ban, to become ever more efficient at recycling tyres. Yet, as EuRIC states, there is still much to be done to improve the circularity of tyres. This will be the subject of the 8th Recyclers’ Talk.
Despite efforts panning decades, the industry is still bogged down on the divide between energy recovery and material recovery, with the overall balance hovering around the 50:50 mark, give or take, as it has done for many years.
EuRIC warns that this scenario could worsen, if the the European Union plans are carried through. Plans that could:
–Ban the use of rubber infill materials used in artificial turf pitches that represents an average of 30% of end-markets;
–Restrict further the content of PAHs and other chemicals impacting the remaining 70% of the market.
EuRIC, believes that immediate policy actions are needed on all the different steps of the tyre value chain – from tyre design, collection and sorting, recycling, to the uptake of recycled materials into new tyres and other end-products.
In particular, the upcoming European Sustainable Product Regulation (ESPR) alongside with the revision of the End-of-Life Vehicles Directive (ELVD) and Construction Product Regulation (CPR) have a key role to play in unlocking investments in tyre recycling in Europe and developing new end-markets that will support the objectives set by the European Green Deal and the new Circular Economy Action Plan.
This is all the more urgent to minimise the EU reliance on natural resources as rubber is a critical raw material in the EU, being mostly imported from South-East Asia for natural rubber and Russia for synthetic rubber.
EuRIC invites the industry to join the 8th edition of its Recyclers’ Talk fully dedicated to tyre recycling in order to discuss with top-level policy-makers and experts on how to boost the circularity of tyres alongside the value chain.
Book Here.
