Report
30.06.2016
On June 23, a conference “Recycling Tyres into Valuable Secondary Resources and Energy” was held in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation. The event, organized by the European-Russian Business Association, ERBA, was attended by representatives of federal and regional authorities, experts and key players in the tyre market.
Thanks to recycling tyres, it is possible to save more than one billion rubles, which will benefit not only manufacturers, but also society: reduced pollution of the environment, new jobs and the opportunity to earn by delivering tyres for recycling. According to the panellists, all we need to do is maintain a constructive dialogue with the authorities in the field of state regulation of business development.
According to various estimates, every year 15 million tons of waste tyres are accumulated worldwide. In Russia, this figure stands at almost a million tons, according to the chairman of the European Recycling Congress, Viktor Hefeli, advisor to the Swiss government on the disposal of industrial waste. That’s the equivalent of 3.5-4 pyramids of Cheops in Egypt according to experts’ estimates.
Tyres are one of the most valuable secondary resources because they are easy to collect and process, said a member of the Committee on Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Larisa Vetoshkina. However, there are not enough incentives to support business in the waste management in Russia. Quite the contrary: the licensing of companies for the collection and recycling of waste products, introduced on July 1 this year, makes it difficult to begin to use secondary resources.
“As of 2017 it will not be permitted to put tyres in landfills. Moreover, each company that wants to use waste, including old tyres, must undergo a number of checks. The business community should actively participate in the development of regional waste management schemes, otherwise the regulation will fall on the shoulders of business as a heavy burden,” Vetoshkina notes.
Of the 850,000 tons of old tyres in Russia, no more than 12% are processed, according to a member of the Committee on Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation Chamber of Commerce and Industry and national expert of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, Vladimir Maryev. Crumb rubber can be used not only in the production of sport fields coatings but also in road construction. Cement plants are prepared to recycle old tyres since they use tyres as an alternative source of energy in the production process. However, there is currently no system of collecting tyres in Russia, and another problem is the low popularity of recycled materials in the market. Therefore the main task is to create a network for collection, processing and demand, the expert believes. It will be a big step towards a closed loop economy in which the majority of the waste goes back into operation and is re-used.
According to Maryev, the environmental fee, which the companies that are unable to collect and dispose of their waste on their own will have to pay as of April 2017 will not help to achieve the target. The amount to be paid by manufacturers and importers of tyres is 7109 rubles per ton. Maryev’s main argument is that the money will settle in the budget and will not be spent on the development of the waste management industry. The result of the introduction of the environmental fee will be an additional burden on tyres manufacturers which experts estimate at about 800 million rubles.
“At the moment, the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resource Management has a working group on the regulation of the implementation of extended producer responsibility (EPR). It includes manufacturers, importers of products (packaging), industry associations and processors of waste associations. We invite companies to join the working group to discuss the problems and find solutions,” said Maryev.
Director of CSR SAIBR, member of the Supreme Environmental Council of the State Duma, head of the working group on the reform in the field of waste management of the Centre for Public Monitoring on the Ecology and Conservation of Forests of the All-Russia People’s Front, Lyudmila Varfolomeeva, also noted the seriousness of the problem of institutionalization of the sphere of waste management and regulatory support of reform including the issue of recycling of used tyres and rubber products. According to the expert, Russia now occupies one of the last places in the world in terms of economic development taking into account environmental factors.
“In most regions of Russia territorial waste management schemes, regional programs and projects are not developed or adopted, there is no intuitive mechanism to support separate waste collection and recycling,” said the expert.
In this regard, she noted the relevance of the development of laws and regulatory legal acts stimulating recycling and the use of rubber recycling products, integrated autorecycling, and introduction of the recycling fee and subsidy schemes. In Denmark, for example, encouraging recycling of tyres by means of ‘green’ taxes facilitated an increase in their reuse and recycling from 35% in 1985 to 61% in 1995. The expert urged business to actively participate in the development of regional waste management schemes, which should be ready by 2017. These documents must integrate information about waste, landfills and processors of each Russian region.
Executive Director of the Tyre Manufacturers Association (TMA) (which includes Bridgestone, Continental, Goodyear, Michelin, Nokian Tyres and Pirelli) Nadezhda Churmeeva, voiced the wishes of market participants regarding state regulation.
“At the moment, it is important for the public authorities to confirm the work mechanism that sets out that the calculation of manufacturer responsibility is achieved by multiplying the recycling norms by the volume of the previous year’s release of the goods, not the current year. This will be convenient for manufacturers and processors as it allows them to work with specific data rather than estimates and enter into meaningful contracts with recyclers. We also consider it essential that pyrolysis and the use of tyres for energy purposes, e.g. by cement plants, should be recognized by regulators as means of recycling of waste tyres. This will open up opportunities for processors to collaborate with tyre manufacturers in the framework of EPR,” said Churmeeva.
And what is the current status of recyclable material processing abroad? In Belarus, by the way, it is mandatory to collect all consumer waste, including scrap metal, paper, cardboard, polymers, glass, rubber, there is a developed system of fines, but there are no modern processing technologies, said the general director of OJSC Gomelchimtorg, Aleksandr Petrovsky. In Germany, the issue of tyre recycling was addressed by the authorities with typical German thoroughness: each tyre produced in the country is to be equipped with an electronic chip with which it will be possible to determine its location. “This will help to control the responsibility of manufacturers,” representative of M.E.E Gmbh, Phillip Hagemann, shared the German practices.
Recycling tyres is a profitable business. EU companies sell old tyres to cement manufacturers who use the tyres for the production of concrete mixes. This allows companies to make more money on recycling. In Russia, the capacities of recyclers in terms of turning tyres into crumb rubber are estimated by experts at 330-390 thousand tons of old tyres a year, and cement plants - at 480-510 thousand tons.
The cost of processing tyres independently ranges from 1,000 to 5,000 rubles per recycled ton. Thus, manufacturing companies can save more than 1 billion rubles a year, according to Viktor Hefeli.
At the conference, European and Russian companies introduced technologies aimed at tyre recycling using the pyrolysis method. It is a technology of thermal decomposition of the tyre in the absence of oxygen. As a result, carbon, oil, gas and scrap iron are formed, said representative of the German firm Bader Metallbau, Bernhard Schneider. The pyrolysis unit, developed by Bader Metallbau is in operation in the city of Friedberg, Germany, and can recycle over 20 million tons of used tyres every year. The resulting carbon can be used to manufacture graphite in the rubber industry. The oil is suitable for processing into lubricant and fuel, gas - into fuel which the pyrolysis unit utilizes.
M.E.E Gmbh presented a thermal bioreactor, which can be used to retrieve residual metals from waste. The output products are aluminium, iron, copper and zinc that have been restored and are ready for reuse. The gas obtained in the course of the technological process is suitable for the production of electricity or heat.
Also, their developments and solutions in the field of waste disposal and consumption were provided by Russian companies: Safe Technology (Bezopasnye Teknnologii) and Special Equipment (Spetstekhnika). The latter suggested a solution for the processing and sale of products on the tyre recycling market.
