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The West Australian Newspaper reports that one of the mining industry's lesser known environmental issues has finally found a solution with the opening of a $20 million-plus recycling factory in Jandakot.

Tyre Stewardship Australia (TSA) has published its 2023/24 Annual Report. Together with its industry, research partners, and government, TSA is leading the charge to transform end-of-life tyre management across the nation. A commitment to innovation, sustainability and industry collaboration has yielded significant achievements over the past decade and paved the way for a more circular tyre economy in Australia. Key highlights of the TSA's last 12 months include:

QLD Mining Tyres & Conveyor Belts Sustainability Forum run by Tyre Stewardship Australia (TSA) with support from the Queensland Department of Environment, Science, and Innovation, is by invitation only and will kick-start how we can work together to find real-world solutions for used mining tire and conveyor belts in Australia. TSA has been running a working group/hub with mining companies in Western Australia, and most recently in New South Wales. We’d be delighted to connect you with appropriate participants if you want to hear about their experience.

This week, Tyrecycle's recycling facility in East Rockingham, located 40 kilometers south of Perth, received its first delivery of off-the-road (OTR) tyres from Alcoa’s mining operations.

Zeppelin Systems entered into another important partnership in the mechanical recycling sector on February 7, 2023. The Italian Technology group formed by RubberJet and Vertech specialized in recycling particularly large scrap tires, for example from trucks and construction and mining machinery. High-quality rubber recyclates are made from scrap tires measuring up to four meters in size, which can later be used to manufacture new tires. According to Zeppelin Systems, the patented and proprietary method is 100% environmentally friendly. According to current figures from the AZuR network (innovation forum for scrap tire recycling, of which Zeppelin Systems is a member), around 3.5 million tons of scrap tires are generated in Europe each year. In Germany alone, around 550,000 tons of scrap tires were accrued in 2021. If every scrap tire in Europe was recycled, around 2.45 million tons of CO2 emissions would be saved.

In the end of June 2023, Tyre Stewardship Australia (TSA) released two reports which provide best practice engagement principles for use by industry, government and Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities to increase resource recovery of Off-The-Road (OTR) rubber products such as tires, conveyor belts and tracks. This is a clear set of principles for OTR rubber resource recovery which recognises and accounts for the needs and expectations of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs).

Gradeall – a manufacturer of innovative tire baling and recycling equipment from Nothern Ireland – have been increasingly exporting their range of tire balers, shredders and conveyors to tire recycling operations based throughout the U.S. The United States is one of the largest contributors of waste tires, with over 279 million scrap tires generated annually. Given the negative environmental impact that scrap tires can cause, there is a global push to combat this problem and develop more appropriate waste tire management solutions.

For many years, tire recycling industry and business worldwide could not design economical solutions to efficiently recycle end-of-life off-the-road (OTR) tires. While OTR tires consist of high-quality natural rubber, one of the challenges in recycling them was transport. Huge size and weight of OTR tires do not allow transporting these tires easily and, as a result, these end-of-life tires used to be buried in quarries and on mining sites. Today, new technologies and innovations in engineering design give us hope that OTR tire recycling will soon become a common practice.

According to Emissions Reduction Alberta (ERA), 20 million tonnes of rubber are used annually in the tire manufacturing sector to produce new tires. Over one million tonnes of industrial tires that are approaching the end of their useful lives are then buried on mine sites as a result of intensive use, creating environmental and operational challenges for mine operators. Circular Rubber Technologies (CRT) has developed a chemical-free devulcanization process that transforms one of the mining industry’s largest waste streams into a new valuable material. Their Rubber Reclaim product will be used to create new tires, significantly reducing the amount of virgin rubber demand and rubber ending up in landfills.