Graham Davy, managing director for Sims Recycling Solutions, said: “The tyre plant, alongside other research and development, was a natural step in our strategy towards achieving the challenging targets of legislation.”
Sims is now working with a number of vehicle treatment plants in order to source tyres to granulate in its new purpose-built facility and has set up around 30 bulking facilities to reduce transport costs.
Mr Davy said: “Sims is investing heavily in a network of 'reception centres' to increase the recycling of ELV tyres arising from our own, partner and other Authorised Treatment Facilities.”
The rubber materials from the processed tyres can be used in a variety of applications including sports grounds, horse tracks, playgrounds surfaces, carpet underlay and as a road surface aggregate.
Myles Pilkington, communications coordinator at the Sims Group, told letsrecycle.com that markets for the end-product is just as important as the processing capacity. He said: “There is essentially 435,000 tonnes every year of waste tyres and there is currently enough capacity to deal with about half of these. So we definitely need more processing capacity but what we also need is the markets for the end products.”
At the moment the plant is processing a stockpile of around 2,000 tonnes of tyres but is looking to start processing delivered and collected tyres during the year.
Legislation pushing for the recycling of comes from the European Landfill and End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) Directives. Under the Landfill Directive, whole tyres were banned from landfill in July 2003 and shredded tyres will also be banned from July 2006.
The ELV Directive sets a target for 2006 for 85% recovery from ELVs of which at least 80% must be through recycling. Tyres make up around 3% of a car by weight and can be recycled or used in energy recovery operations such as cement kilns. But Sims has said that it would be better if tyres are recycled in order to leave the 5% energy recovery for materials, such as mixed plastics, that currently cannot be recycled.
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