It is now standard practice for tire retailers to impose a tire disposal charge when you change your tires, which tends typically to be about $1.00 a tire. You may wonder why you have to pay this charge - after all tire disposal charges have not always been the norm.

The real answer to this question is that it is a simple case of economics - a case of supply and demand. Going back twenty years the scrap disposal scenario was totally different to the way it is today. It used to be the case that car tire retreading companies would collect the majority of used tires as the raw material for their production. They used to pick up the used tires free of charge (or even pay for the privilege).

However, that was when over 4 million retreaded car tires were sold in the UK every year. In the meantime the market for British manufactured retreads has been squeezed by cheap new tires from the Far East to the point where the UK market is no more than a tenth of what it was. This means that retreaders no longer pick up the scrap tires. This is done by professional tire disposal companies who need to charge the retailer for this service.

Much of the tire disposal in the UK is now carried out by members of the Responsible Recyclers Scheme, which is now administered under license by the Tire Recovery Association. Members of the scheme guarantee that the tires collected are disposed of in an environmentally friendly method, whether recycled or used as a fuel in cement kilns. As a guarantee, members of the scheme are subject to a stringent audit process conducted regularly by independent environmental audit specialists.

The Responsible Recyclers Scheme also promotes best practice in the tire recovery industry and helps protect against the continuing scourge of fly-tipping.

In the UK around 40 million tires are taken off car, vans, trucks and buses every year, a total of 440,000 tons. That is a huge amount of scrap to dispose of and it has to be paid for somehow. Although the UK tire recovery industry currently has enough capacity to cope with scrap tire arising, the balance between overcapacity and under capacity is relatively fine.

Of key importance in the tire disposal market in the UK is The Landfill Directive, which was adopted by the UK in July 1999. This banned the disposal of whole tires by landfill from July 2003 and shredded tires from July 2006. This has changed the entire scenario of how tires are disposed of and recycled in the UK and Europe. There are a number of ways in which scrap tires are recycled in the UK although all of these can be defined as either reuse, recycling or recovery.

Retreading is still considered to be one of the most preferable method of tire recycling as it effectively doubles the life of the new tire, reducing the numbers of new tires needed and thereby minimizing waste. Retread still make up nearly half of all truck tires on the road but the number of car tires that are retreaded is now relatively small.

Other common uses for scrap tires include sports and recreational surfaces, landfill engineering, carpet underlay/floor coverings, and road building. Roads manufactured using crumb rubber last longer, have better traction and reduce noise.

In the UK scrap tires are also widely used as a fuel in cement kilns as an alternative to the traditional fuel, coal.