The council of the Western Isles, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, has introduced a purpose-built tyre baler at its Bennadrove Recycling Centre. This will compress and bale tyres received at its Rueval landfill site.
The horizontal baler, manufactured by German company HSM, was modified to specialise in compressing car and lorry tyres into large blocks. Each block contains about 170 tyres and weighs about one tonne.
Council spokesman Nigel Scott said the blocks would initially be used as an engineering material for landfill site development works. He added: “There is considerable potential for other on-island uses as similar blocks have been used in other areas as a sustainable material for coastal erosion defences, road construction and land stabilisation projects.”
Senior recycling and community officer David MacLeod said the operational cost of the baler would be much the same as for a shredder, but the capital cost was much less – about 125,000. “In addition, landfilling of shredded tyres is only to be permitted for another couple of years, so shredding would only provide a short term solution,” he explained.
“The cost of a tyre shredder incorporating a system to separate the rubber from the steel belts would be around 250,000 and obviously we would not have the volume of waste tyres in the Western isles to merit this level of investment.”
Mr MacLeod it was difficult to estimate the tonnage of tyres it will recycle per year, but said last year 26 tonnes of separated tyres were collected, as well as 4,000 tyres removed annually from end of life vehicles.
Whole tyres were banned from UK landfills in July 2003, and a ban on shredded tyres will come into place in July 2006.
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