Spanish Tyre EPR scheme SIGNUS has confirmed that it is seeing year on year increases in undeclared tyres.
SIGNUS to Step up Controls on Tyre Collections to Combat Fraud
In the past year these undeclared tyres accounted for around 18 per cent of total tyre collections by SIGNUS: The equivalent of practically 5 million passenger tyres, or a total of 10 weeks of collection, generating an important extra cost in the management of the system.
The legal obligation of any management system is to manage only the same number of tyres that its producers put on the replacement market. This is an obligation that SIGNUS exceeded until now, generating an imbalance in its economic operation to the detriment mainly of the consumer.
In order to alleviate this fraud to the consumer, SIGNUS is increasing the control of tyre collections with measures that will be applied gradually and that are summarised in the following:
– Universal collection from the workshops of the associated producers.
– Specific controls at the workshops.
– Review requests for free collection to workshops that violate the “Conditions for the free collection of used tyres“, regarding storage, physical condition, or absence of classification, whose acceptance is mandatory in each collection request.
– They will not consider collection requests from workshops that buy from producers who do not declare the tyres they put on the replacement market.
These measures will complement those already applied.
With these measures, as well as with the close collaboration with the Nature Protection Service of the Civil Guard (Seprona), it is intended to pursue those unfair and fraudulent practices in order not only to comply with the current legislation, but to protect the environment.