Support road.cc

Like this site? Help us to make it better.

TECH NEWS

Scrapping bicycle tyres may be about to become illegal. Here’s how to recycle yours

A new bicycle tyre recycling scheme is due by the end of 2020

The disposal of bicycle tyres is a significant environmental issue, with Velorim suggesting that 30,500,000 tyres and 152,500,000 inner tubes are disposed of at landfill in the UK each year. As cycling is further promoted as a sustainable transport model and more tyres are used as a result, things understandably have to change.

The Environment Bill 2019-21, which is currently at the committee stage in the House of Commons, looks set to bring the disposal of used bicycle tyres into line with the laws which have made it illegal to dump motor vehicle tyres since 2003.

Work on this issue began back in 2018 when a survey, conducted by the Association of Cycle Traders (ACT), found that 44,000 tonnes of bicycle tyres and inner tubes ended up in landfill each year. This led to a recycling scheme being created where participating bike shops and cycle businesses act as collection points for used tyres and inner tubes.

Run by Velorim, the scheme was scheduled to be up and running by the end of 2020 with users paying 50p for each tyre they recycle and 20p per inner tube. The timescale, however, has been delayed due to the COVID-19 outbreak, so there may be some delay should the bill even pass.

With the potential delay in mind, here’s how you can currently recycle your tyres and tubes.

Bicycle tyres

Currently, many councils will accept bicycle tyres free of charge at local recycling centres, combining these with motor vehicle tyres. Many of those recycling centres, however, will not allow you to turn up unless you’re in a car, something that one cyclist has successfully changed in Devon after being turned away on his cargo bike.

Hopefully, we’ll see more councils accepting people turning up on bikes soon.

If you’ve got a set of tyres that you really like, or you’d like a subtly cycling-related fashion accessory, why not get a belt, watch strap, wallet or saddle bag from a company such as Recycle & Bicycle or BuckIt Belts?

Inner tubes

Inner tubes are easier to recycle with a number of recycling schemes already in place. Cycle of Good has a wide network of inner tube drop-off points across England and Wales. They take your used inner tubes and send them to Malawi where ten full-time tailors turn them into products that are then sold on. You can read more about them here.

As off.road.cc reported back in January, tyre and inner tube manufacturer Schwalbe has also got an inner tube recycling programme in place having recently launched a scheme that can turn old tubes into new ones with no loss of quality.

They say that the scheme has been running successfully in Germany for five years and that any brand of inner tube is welcome, including slime tubes and those with latex sealant. A list of participating bike shops will be here when the scheme becomes fully operational.

Do you know of other schemes, either nationally or in your local area? Let us know below.

Add new comment

36 comments

Avatar
quiff | 3 years ago
0 likes

Also, what's the basis for this statement: "The Environment Bill 2019-2, which is currently at the committee stage in the House of Commons, looks set to bring the disposal of used bicycle tyres into line with the laws which have made it illegal to dump motor vehicle tyres since 2003"

I haven't read the documents in full, but I can't immediately see any direct reference in the bill to the disposal of bike tyres. That's not to say it couldn't be covered indirectly by the bill, but it's quite a specific statement.    

Avatar
mdavidford replied to quiff | 3 years ago
0 likes

I think that's why the qualifier 'looks set to' is in there. The bill itself doesn't do much banning or requiring of anything specific. It mandates authorities to consider how to improve waste management, and does a lot of 'conferring the power to' take some kind of generic action.

Velorim are claiming that the government has 'signalled intent' to use those powers to ban sending bicycle tyres to landfill. That seems to be based on a rather liberal extrapolation from government confirming that 'tyres will be one of its five priority waste streams'. On the face of it, though, the latter doesn't necessarily imply the former - they could be thinking more about cracking down harder on illegal disposal of car tyres, or improving the methods used to recycle them, or even just incentivising the recycling of bicycle tyres.

Avatar
hawkinspeter | 3 years ago
2 likes

Charging people to recycle goods seems a bit counter-productive to me. I'd prefer that inner tubes and tyres have a small recycling fee built into the retail price and then the seller would presumably pay that as some form of tax. Then you could provide a rebate for actually taking the old tyres/tubes to a recycling centre shop.

e.g. Add 50p to the price of inner tubes and maybe £1 for each tyre and when you recycle them you get paid 25p/50p (I'm thinking back to the old bottle recycling schemes). This would then provide an incentive for someone to pick up old discarded tyres/tubes and return them for cold hard cash. The extra money paid could then be used to pay the bike shops/recycling points for their part in the process.

Avatar
quiff replied to hawkinspeter | 3 years ago
1 like

My thoughts exactly. The comparison with a ban on dumping car tyres doesn't work for me. I imagine that the vast majority of car tyres are changed by a garage rather than the end user, and the garage then factors any recycling / disposal charge for the old tyres into the price charged to the consumer. Yes, some bike tyres and tubes are changed by shops, but I imagine the majority are done by consumers, and you need to make it as easy as possible for them to recycle if you want to have an impact. Charging them to recycle on a per item basis is no incentive.       

Avatar
Liam Cahill | 3 years ago
1 like

A few questions about the figures quoted. I took these direct from Velorim. I've contacted both Velorim and ACT for clarification

Avatar
Gus T | 3 years ago
1 like

Unfortunately this is being forced on us because there isn't enough profit in recycling inner tubes and cycle tyres so the recycling companies refuse to take them. Staff at my local recycling sites have told me that they have been instructed not to put cycle tyres in the tyre recycling container because the recyclers won't take them.

I may be wrong but I'm sure I saw a video of a tour of the Schwalbe factory where they said faulty tyres are melted down and the rubber reused. Can anyone explain why this can't this be done?

Avatar
quiff replied to Gus T | 3 years ago
0 likes

I guess because melting down and reusing tyres which, even if they don't meet your own quality standards for sale, have still been produced in your own controlled conditions, is a way of minimising your own losses, whereas collecting and processing used and contaminated product from elsewhere could conceivably be loss-making. Which is presumably why Velorim are charging to recycle.      

Avatar
Sriracha replied to Gus T | 3 years ago
1 like
Gus T wrote:

I may be wrong but I'm sure I saw a video of a tour of the Schwalbe factory where they said faulty tyres are melted down and the rubber reused. Can anyone explain why this can't this be done?

I'm pretty sure vulcanisation of rubber is a one way process which cross-links the polymer chains, making the rubber harder wearing. But then I didn't think you could just "melt it down" thereafter.

Avatar
Daddylonglegs | 3 years ago
0 likes

Just popped over to the Velorim page. They have a handy contact form at the bottom if you want to enquire how they arrived at those apparently ludicrous figures.

It's one thing encouraging the recycling of tyres and tubes, it's quite another when there's a profit motive behind it, supported by some made-up numbers.

Avatar
FlyingPenguin | 3 years ago
1 like

Yeah...  No.  Our local council just closed our only bike shop (to demolish and make way for a road improvement scheme), meaning we're left without a local bike shop.  Tip is a 40 minute round trip (at least, when you include queueing) and you can't access it by bike or on foot.

Unless there's a dropoff point placed in the supermarket carpark centres, they're going straight in the bin as always.

Avatar
rkemb | 3 years ago
4 likes

Those numbers are nonsense: total cycling in the UK is around 3.3bn miles per year (https://www.cyclinguk.org/statistics ), so for those numbers to be right an inner tube would last 22 miles on average and a tyre a bit over 100 miles. That's just silly.

Avatar
fwhite181 replied to rkemb | 3 years ago
0 likes

Yeah, they do seem about a factor of 10 too high.  Given that in the last 40,000km of riding I've worn out 4 tyres and 5 tubes (yay, puncture patches) I'm not sure where all these dead tyres are supposed to be coming from 

Avatar
Gromski replied to fwhite181 | 3 years ago
2 likes

83,562 tyres per day...

417,808 inner tubes per day 🤔

And Velorim will charge 50p per tyre, meaning they could stand to make £40k per day. Sounds like someone's been cooking the books to justify a scheme.

Avatar
rkemb replied to rkemb | 3 years ago
2 likes

Perhaps road.cc could help by providing the source of that 44,000 tonnes of tyres and inner tubes to landfill. The Association of Cycle Traders website hosts a page inviting people to take part in the survey (in association with Velorim... https://www.cycleassociation.uk/news/?id=2388 ) but I can't find any actual reports explaining the findings or methodology.

The Velorim website quotes the numbers in the article above with no sourcing whatsoever.

Avatar
Chris Hayes | 3 years ago
0 likes

I'd like to see the assumptions behind some of their numbers, but I'm highly sympathetic to this article and am willing to accept the challenge to do better. 

I cycle 12,000km + per annum and get through consumables (tyres, inner tubes, brake pads, chains, cassettes, etc) at a steady rate (i.e. certainly 3 sets of tyres a year - and that ignores replacement through accidental damage, etc.).  I've now switched to tubeless tyres, but haven't given any thought to the environment impact of sealant, which I now seem to be buying by the bucketful...

I'm not sure what the economics of 'cycling waste' is, but perhaps specific recycling bins near bike shops is the answer, whether that's Halfords' car parks, the LBS, or the local dump.  Perhaps this is one for a cycling charity? 

The other issue here is the increasing use of carbon / resin parts, a compound material which is very expensive to recycle. 

 

 

Avatar
fwhite181 replied to Chris Hayes | 3 years ago
0 likes

You must really hate on tyres to burn them in 4,000km! May I ask what tyres you're using? I've often wondered if cassettes/chains/chain rings which are almost entirely metal can be recycled in household recycling. 

Avatar
bobbinogs replied to fwhite181 | 3 years ago
0 likes

I can also get through a 'race' tyre on the rear in 4-5,000 km. Tyres like Vittoria Corsa or Conti 4000/5000, etc. A lot depends on local road surfaces, spray and chip seems to act like coarse grade sandpaper.

Avatar
fwhite181 replied to bobbinogs | 3 years ago
0 likes

I guess I'm lucky - currently an 8000km old GP4000SII on my summer bike back wheel (although it only goes out in sunshine), and just replaced the rear GP4Season at 7800km on my commuter! Another thing - if I wear the rear tyre but the front's okay, I just replace the rear, so my average front tyre lasts ~12000km.

Regardless of individual wear-rates I'd have thought the 'average' cyclist probably doesn't get near the mileage required to wear out tyres in less than a year, so the throw-away rate should be ~1-2 tyres per cyclist/year at worst.  

Avatar
Chris Hayes replied to fwhite181 | 3 years ago
0 likes

I find that puncture resistance is massively reduced beyond this point... I use Contis... Agree on the metals 

Avatar
Philh68 | 3 years ago
1 like

I reuse my tubes by cutting them into lengths to use for edge clamping when building furniture. My profile pic should show that I'm in favour of reusing tyres!

Avatar
bsknight | 3 years ago
2 likes

We need greener designed bikes. Ones that don't require a constant ditching of parts that could be better designed to last longer. We have to throw away whole cassettes, where one part is worn, etc.

Avatar
Municipal Waste replied to bsknight | 3 years ago
0 likes

That's why I'm now exclusively using Chris King parts wherever I can (except on my town bike for obvious reasons).

Avatar
fukawitribe replied to Municipal Waste | 3 years ago
1 like

Their world famous tyres, inner tubes and cassettes ?

Avatar
froze replied to bsknight | 3 years ago
2 likes

You are so right on!  major appliances in the US went from lasting on average 24 years to 8 to 12 years today, so we throw away huge refrigerators, etc now.  My washing machine I bought lasted 4 whole years, my previous one lasted 31 years.

If major manufactures don't want to make products to last a long time and therefore benefit the worlds environment, guess what that means besides money greed?  It means that no one above the average citizen gives a rats ass about the environment like they claim they do.

I can bet you that if America started a tire recycling law it would only be so that wherever we turn it in to can charge us a fee to dispose of it...greed again.

Avatar
Johnandsue4fun | 3 years ago
4 likes

SCRAP CYCLE TYRES ?

Who really believes that we scrap over 30 million bike tyres every year? That must represent between £600,000,000 and £1,200,000,000 in sales each year - I think that will be news to my local bike shops! 

 

Avatar
IanGlasgow | 3 years ago
1 like

"Cycle of Good has a wide network of inner tube drop-off points across England and Wales."

There's also quite a few in Scotland and at lest one in Northern Ireland.

Avatar
Capt Sisko | 3 years ago
10 likes

"Velorim suggesting that 30,500,000 tyres and 152,500,000 inner tubes are disposed of at landfill in the UK each year."

I'm really struggling to believe those numbers. Call the UK population 60million and that means broadly speaking one quarter of the entire population replace their front & back tyres every year, and those 15million people have on average TEN punctures per year, none of which they can be bothered to repair.

Call me a cynical old git if you like, but me thinks someone’s massaging the figure here.

Avatar
bsknight replied to Capt Sisko | 3 years ago
0 likes

Many people tke their bikes to shops to have a puncture repaired. They all just throw away the damaged one and replace with new.

Avatar
Awavey replied to Capt Sisko | 3 years ago
0 likes

do the numbers really matter that much for a start,what numbers would you be less cynical with, half, quarter, 1/10th ? does it matter if only 3 million tyres and 1million inner tubes end up in landfill, they are still whacking big numbers of stuff thrown away that should be recycled, that should be the take away point we can do better.

as for how accurate are they anyway, well I believe theyll be based on items sold estimated from the survey of bike retailers and so its a ball park estimate,but in the last year,well Ive got two bikes and gone through 4 tyres & probably a couple of inner tubes at least, and I dont ride monster miles or cover lots of puncture prolific roads/trails. I wouldnt generally repair an inner tube unless I was forced to, Ive not had much success with patches before, and as I tend to ride by myself without the safety net of a team car coming to my rescue on speed dial, I like to think of inner tubes without patches as one less thing I have to worry about if i can, so I replace with new if I have any problems or punctures with them, so I dont think the numbers are massively out even if they might seem to be overstating the problem

 

Avatar
sbarner replied to Awavey | 3 years ago
0 likes

If numbers don't matter, don't use them. Quoting bogus statistics to make an argument puts your credibility at risk. If cyclists truly are experiencing five flats per tire over its lifetime, there are some serious problems with road condition and debris that need to be addressed. I would suggest that patching could be seen as a practice to support for environmental as well as economic reasons. If your patches are failing, learn how to do it right. I've run tubes with a dozen patches without having one fail. I carry at least one spare tube and a patch kit, replacing the tube on the road, and patching it when I get home. The patched tube goes back in the bag for the next flat. As tire widths increase and pressures go down, patching only gets easier to do successfully. Re-purposing a tube as raw material for other products is not true recycling, but just temporarily diverting it from the waste stream.

Pages

Latest Comments