Products

Tires and Product Stewardship

NWPSC Activities and Programs

The NWPSC Tire and Policy Subcommittees are working to develop product stewardship solutions for tires that involve all stakeholders including manufacturers, retailers, consumers and local and state government. See the 2008 NWPSC Tire Subcommittee Issue paper (PDF file, 41KB) to learn more about subcommittee activities and next steps.

Washington Department of Ecology Waste Tire Management In 1989, the Washington State Legislature passed Substitute House Bill (SHB) 1671 (Sections 92 - 95). This bill established a $1 per tire fee on the retail sale of new vehicle tires for the Vehicle Tire Recycling Account (VTRA). This account provided approximately $14.4 million for the Washington Department of Ecology (Ecology) to clean up 12 million tires around the state. The fee collection ended in 1994 and those funds were used up by 1998.

In 2005, the Washington State Legislature passed SHB 2085, creating a Waste Tire Removal Account with funds for cleanup of unauthorized and unlicensed tire piles. Funds for this account come from a $1 fee for each new replacement tire sold in Washington to be collected from July 2005 to June 2010. It is a $1 fee on the sale of new replacement tires - the fee is collected by the tire dealers and delivered to the Department of Revenue. Tire dealers are responsible for the disposal cost of waste tires collected by their business.

Ecology has been using these funds since May 2007 to clean up tire piles around the state as required by the 2005 legislation. As of December 2008, these funds have removed a total of 75 tire piles from around the state containing about 40,000 tons of scrap tires. In 2008 almost all of the tires removed from tire piles have either been recycled or reused, very little has been landfilled.

The Washington State Department of Ecology has released several publications regarding the status of waste tire management. SHB 2308: Waste Tire Report (PDF file, 4.13MB) was published in December 2002 to document the market for scrap tire recycling and identify opportunities to expand scrap tire recycling. The report contains a section about product stewardship programs implemented elsewhere and how to establish these practices in Washington.

The Study of Unauthorized Tire Piles (PDF file, 12.7MB) (ESHB 2085), published in November 2005, identified about 3 million waste tires stored in 50 unauthorized sites in the state and concluded that these sites could be cleaned up within a five-year period at a funding level of $.40 per tire sold in the state. The costs and schedule estimates were based on shredding and landfilling. The report did not address the actions or costs that would prevent future clean up of unauthorized tire piles, such as market development or product stewardship approaches.

The Tire Recycling and Reuse in 2006, Tire Pile Cleanup status for 2007 (PDF file, 257KB), published in April 2008, summarizes the total tons of waste tires disposed, reused, or recycled since 2002 and the tire pile cleanup efforts in 2007.

Oregon Department of Environmental Quality Waste Tire Management Program According to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, there has been a dramatic decline in the rate of waste tire recycling since the mid-1990s when the state had a waste tire program funded by a $1 fee on each new tire sold at retail (the fee ended in 1992). In 1996, more than 90 percent of tires were recycled, but by 2005 that number was less than 50 percent. The decline was precipitated by the loss of a major fuel market in Idaho. Although remaining market outlets continued to use Oregon waste tires in the manufacture of rubber products or for fuel, the majority of waste tires suddenly lacked markets. Several landfills in Oregon emerged during this time as low-cost, high-volume management options for waste tires. Oregon currently bans landfill disposal of whole tires, so tires must be shredded prior to disposal. Landfill disposal has become the predominant outlet for waste tires, including those from the neighboring states of Washington and Idaho. Since 2000, more than half the waste tires disposed of in Oregon landfills each year (61.5% in 2005) came from out of the state.

top of page