Concerns as tyre mountain continues to grow

EcoVersion is not a member of the New Zealand Tyre Recyclers and Collectors Association which promotes environmentally safe collection, recycling and re-use of waste tyres.

The company behind a tyre dump of about 10,000 tyres that is growing fast on land near Lake Taupo says the tyres will be stored in the district only until its tyre recycling plant at Kawerau can be built.

However, a question mark remains over whether the plant - which the company EcoVersion insists will go ahead - will ever be constructed, especially in the absence of incentives to recycle tyres. EcoVersion is not a member of the New Zealand Tyre Recyclers and Collectors Association which promotes environmentally safe collection, recycling and re-use of waste tyres. The technology EcoVersion is proposing to use to recycle tyres has never been introduced in New Zealand before, although it has been used overseas.

Adele Rose of 3R Group said EcoVersion's tyre recycling technology using heat and pressure to extract valuable product from the tyres would be new to New Zealand. Other New Zealand companies had recycled tyres, manufacturing rubber crumb and rubber matting for agricultural uses.

However, without incentives in place, recycling tyres was barely economically viable. Overseas collectors were paid to pick up tyres and the end users either paid for them or were provided with them depending on the use, Ms Rose said. However, in New Zealand, the reverse situation applied.

"In New Zealand, the collectors pay to take the tyres and then that can lead to illegal dumping if it costs more for them to dispose of them properly."

EcoVersion director Angela Merrie is adamant the company is well advanced with its plans to recycle tyres.

She told Radio New Zealand's Nine to Noon programme the company's large-scale tyre processing and recycling facility would be in operation by the end of this year and that it needed to build up a stockpile of tyres to use when the technology was operating. She said of the 1000 tonnes of tyres the company had collected from a tyre mountain in Hamilton, 50 to 100 tonnes had gone to the Taupo district, with the balance - about 135,000 tyres - being stored at a Waihi quarry. The New Zealand Herald revealed last week that EcoVersion had an undischarged bankrupt in a key management role and was overseen by a man who was linked to the crash of Cobb & Co.

Meanwhile, Taupo district Mayor David Trewavas is concerned about what will happen to the tyres stored west of Kinloch, and which were this week still continuing to arrive.

The report that led nowhere

Some countries have been recycling tyres for more than 30 years, says Adele Rose, chief executive of 3R Group, which led the Tyrewise Group Project seeking solutions for waste tyres.

The group, a collection of industry, council, local government and tyre importer groups, developed an industry scheme called Tyrewise for the Ministry for the Environment, with funding from the Government's Waste Minimisation Fund. It submitted its report to the ministry two years ago, which called for feedback in May 2014. Nothing has happened. Only 30 per cent of New Zealand's tyres are recycled, with the rest going to landfill or being dumped illegally.