Tyres kept from dump
Stats reveal impact of new facility
A PROPOSED recycling plant in Toowoomba will take more than a million end-of-life tyres out of landfill across the region every year.
New data from the company behind the world-first recycling facility has been revealed, showing the environmental footprint that could potentially be eliminated through the process.
Green Distillation Technologies has proposed the plant for the Wellcamp Business Park in the city’s western suburbs, and held its annual general meeting last week in Toowoomba.
Chief operating officer Trevor Bayley said the new figures were drawn from motorist statistics across the Darling Downs.
“End-of-life-tyres are one of those environmental problems that we seem to choose to ignore, but if you start to imagine what one million old tyres will look like you start to understand where we are coming from,” he said.
“There is no market research that tells us exactly how many old tyres there are in the region but our estimates are based on the fact that there are more than four million vehicles registered in southern and south-eastern Queensland and we know that on average a vehicle will require at least one new tyre each year.”
Old tyres in the Toowoomba region are sent to Brisbane to be either cut up and put in landfill or crumbled into tiny pieces for other purposes.
But Mr Bayley said it didn’t solve the issue that the tyres remained in their original state.
“In the case of crumbing, although some of the tyre crumb is used for sporting fields and kiddies’ playgrounds, the reality is that a considerable amount is exported for use as tyre derived fuel in China, Vietnam and India which are countries with lower environmental standards,” he said.
“Our proposed plant in Toowoomba is expected to commence next year and when completed will process 19,300 tonnes, or a mix of about 700,000 car and truck tyres per year, to yield approximately 8 million litres of oil, 7,700 tonnes of carbon and 2,000 tonnes of steel.”