Ecologists in Action have asked the regional government to deny the authorisation of the Cosmos cement plant to burn waste after checking that La Robla and Venta de Baños plants exceeded their limits for tyre burning. Â
Ecologists in Action Protest Tyre Burning
Ecologistas in Action state that “it violates the legal priority of recycling, the objectives of the Waste Plan and puts the health and economy of the Comarca at risk”
Ecologists in Action requested that the Environment Minister of the Board, Juan Carlos Suárez Quiñones, to refuse the permit for “tyre incineration” requested by the cement company Cosmos – located in Toral de los Vados – due to it failing to comply with the Castille Waste Plan. In addition, they insist that it would mean “putting the health and the economy of an entire region at risk”.
In response to an oral question from the Parliamentary Group of Podemos, the Director recognised that in 2016 the cement factories of La Robla (León) and Venta de Baños (Palencia) incinerated 31,400 tons of ELT, well above the 23,300 tons collected that same year in the workshops and scrap yards of Castille and León. “Large amounts of this waste come from the Communities of Madrid and the Basque Country, or even from neighboring countries such as France,” they add.
The counselor, according to Ecologists in Action, said in June that the limit of incinerated tyres in Castille and León was 5,800 tons in 2016, “six times less than the figure provided now, evidencing the lack of control or opacity of the management of this waste in the region.
In this context, “it is incomprehensible that the Ministry of Suárez-Quiñones intends to further expand the overcapacity of treatment of the Community, authorising the cement kilns of Toral de los Vados in El Bierzo the annual incineration of another 33,500 tons of tyres, which added to the 85,000 tons per year already authorised in the cement factories of La Robla and Venta de Baños, half of the used tyres produced per year in Spain would be burned in Castille and León.”
For all the above, Ecologists in Action asks the minister refuse the permit to burn waste tyres in Cosmos, and proposes as an alternative the recycling of rubber in the pavements of regional and provincial roads, “according to the Regional Road Plan of Castilla y León 2008- 2020, which if fulfilled would make it possible to take advantage of all the ELT collected every year in the region, making its incineration unnecessary “.
