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Today, many developing countries suffer from poor waste management practices and severe environmental problems. This includes not only insufficient wastewater treatment, dangerous chemicals in soil or solid household waste, but also end-of-life tires (ELTs) which, accumulated at landfills, pose threat to human health. Whereas fraught politics is incapable of designing scrap tire management regulations and establishing collection systems, there are other practices which could help. To affect scrap tire management and recycling on local level, one should come up with solutions tailored to people’s economic behavior and habits, and look at their economic needs. This is where crowdsourcing for ELTs comes into play.

The International Organization for Standardization (2008, 2013) defines chemical recycling as a production of new raw materials by changing the chemical structure of polymers (e.g., plastic, rubber) through depolymerization, excluding energy recovery and incineration. Whereby depolymerisation is understood as a reversion of a polymer to its monomer(s) or to a polymer of lower relative molecular mass. This irreversible chemical decomposition (depolymerization) in pyrolysis processes is caused solely by a rise in temperature in an inert or oxygen free environment (UIPAC, 2021).

Scandinavian Enviro Systems (Enviro) – a Swedish tire pyrolysis equipment manufacturer and operator – reports its options-based incentive scheme was approved at the Annual General Meeting on May 20; moreover, it had generated substantial interest among key employees and Board members when the subscription period ended on 11 June. The scheme raised a total of SEK 5,600,000 (EUR 550,000) to the Company as of 16 June this year.

This September, Robert Weibold attended the First International Cooperation Summit on Tire and Rubber Recycling in Kunshan, China, on 16 and 17 September 2019. The event gathered industry participants from all over China, as well as from the European Union, the United States and other countries. Proclaimed by Zhu Jun, the president of China’s Tire Recycling Association (CTRA), the motto of the summit was “Environment first, Resources second; no mercy to polluting technologies”. As he and many other speakers asserted, China had gone a huge transformation in the tire recycling industry over the last 10 years.

270 tire pyrolysis units will be closed in India at the request of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) which claimed that 19 states failed to comply with environmental regulations; the corresponding order has been issued by the National Green Tribunal (NGT). The list of the states practicing unsafe pyrolysis include Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, as noted by the local media.

South Korean waste treatment and raw material recycling company LD Carbon (CEO Baek, Seong-mun and Hwang, Yong-kyung) announced that it had signed an MOU with Japan’s Sumitomo Rubber Industries, Ltd. for the commercialization of sustainable tire raw materials. Sumitomo Rubber Industries is a global tire manufacturer head quartered in Japan, ranked global No.5 in terms of sales (approximately 7.25 billion USD) LD Carbon and Sumitomo Rubber Industries held a business agreement ceremony at the headquarters of Sumitomo Rubber Industries located in Kobe, Japan on November 18 and promised to cooperate in the commercialization of recovered carbon black and pyrolysis oil.

A new tire recycling line has been commissioned and installed in Poland by American tire recycling equipment manufacturer CM Shredders. The company says it is the second CM line in Europe intended for tire pyrolysis / gasification industry. CM Shredders (formerly Columbus McKinnon) revealed that its system is capable of manufacturing rubber free of wire, which may be used as a feedstock in tire pyrolysis. In addition, the equipment produces purified steel wire from tires.

Enrestec – Taiwan’s leader in end-of-life tire pyrolysis technology – and Eco Infinic – Thailand’s manufacturer of synthetic oil and carbon black from used tires – officially completed the signing of the "Phase II Engineering Equipment Sale and Purchase Contract" for the end-of-life tire pyrolysis system.

Port of Sunderland director Matthew Hunt said: “We are delighted that Wastefront has chosen to construct its first ever plant at Port of Sunderland and we are looking forward to working with Christian and the team to bring their vision to life. “Port of Sunderland is currently undergoing a major transformation, with over £8 million being pumped into improving its roads and infrastructure, and the decision by Wastefront to invest here shows just how much confidence this is breeding among our stakeholders and the wider market.”