Starting next year, people in New Orleans could get paid for recycling tyres
The incentive programme is supposed to discourage people from dumping their tyres illegally throughout the city. This is an ongoing issue across the USA, with local clear ups collecting thousands of dumped tyres on an almost weekly basis.
Despite multiple tire cleanups and even tyre fires in New Orleans East, the illegal dumping of them continues to plague the area’s neighbourhoods.
Staff at the city’s sanitation department say they pick up between 30,000 and 50,000 dumped tyres a year.
New Orleans City Council President Helena Moreno visited one of the dump sites. She says the city is taking action.
“We’re moving forward with a new pilot programme, which is really an incentive programme, so that tyres are brought to the City of New Orleans, and hopefully they won’t just end up being dumped throughout our neighbourhoods.”
Of course, there is then a risk that clever operators will start picking from hidden stockpiles to claim the “bounty”. Whilst this is a start to addressing tyre dumping, it can surely only be a sticking plaster until some form of managed tyre recycling system is created , not just in Louisiana, but in every state. Some, such as Connecticut, have already started down an EPR route to address just this issue.
Starting next year, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and the New Orleans Sanitation Department will put $250,000 towards the incentive programme.
“I really think if we put a bounty on those tyres, and we’ve got places where we can collect them, and I think that would go a long way, and it would prevent a lot of the other pilferage that goes on in the city with people looking for ways to make money,” said Joe Threat, the city’s deputy chief administrative officer for infrastructure. Some community activists say it’s a step in the right direction, but more needs to be done to sustain the programme.
