Tyre retailers and manufacturers will now have more stewardship activities to be complete to reduce waste for end-of-life tyres for heavy vehicles
The federal government has expanded the list of products that industry must ensure are handled and ultimately disposed of in an environmentally appropriate manner to include tyres, mattresses and plastics in healthcare products.
Environment and water minister Tanya Plibersek has added these items to the minister’s product stewardship priority list for 2022–23, published during National Recycling Week.
The makers and importers of items on the product stewardship priority list must take responsibility for the impacts of their products on the environment across their entire life cycle.
It goes above and beyond recycling and considers how the development, design, manufacture, import, sale, use and recovery of materials and products can be adjusted to improve environmental outcomes.
There are existing industry-led initiatives for tyres and mattresses recycling, but the federal government says unfortunately not enough businesses are voluntarily participating. The addition of these products on the minister’s product stewardship priority list means that if participation does not increase, the government will consider regulation.
This listing relates to end-of-life tyres, including passenger, bus, truck and off-the-road (OTR) tyres.
Each year 563,000 tonnes of tyres are purchased in Australia, or the equivalent of 58 million passenger tyres, generating around 450,000 tonnes of waste. Sending tyres to landfill impacts the environment through long degradation timeframes, contributing to the release of harmful chemicals and plastics into the environment.
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Tyre stockpiling, onsite burial and illegal dumping have been known risks for many years. These issues are compounded by international shipping constraints, domestic market pricing, transport costs and storage pressures, and low domestic demand for waste tyre derived products.
The federal government has accredited the industry-led Tyre Product Stewardship Scheme (TPSS), implemented by Tyre Stewardship Australia. The aim of the TPSS is to manage the environmental and human health impacts of end-of-life tyres.
The purpose of this listing is to drive industry participation in the TPSS and will include consideration of regulatory approaches.
The federal government says the listing should help strengthen industry-led product stewardship action for tyres by increasing onshore consumption and recovery rate of all end-of-life tyres, increasing contribution by tyre importers to stewardship activities and increasing tyre retailer participation in stewardship activities.
Other products already listed include solar panels, electrical and electronic products, child car seats, oil containers, clothing textiles and problematic plastics.
“An industry-led stewardship approach is one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to reduce a product’s impact on the environment and human health,” Plibersek says.
“Around half of tyre importers do not contribute financially to the current Tyre Product Stewardship Scheme so more needs to be done.
“The priority list makes our intentions clear – if industry does not act, the government will.”