The Environment Agency (EA) has begun a “comprehensive review,” according to the BBC, into the waste tyre shipments from the UK. Millions of tyres, sent to be recycled, had actually been “cooked” in makeshift furnaces, leading to health as well as environmental damage.
Fighting Dirty, a pressure group, has threatened legal action against the EA over the “lack of action” as it described it, over tyre exports. The EA has asked the group to wait before its review is completed. It has also asked File on 4 Investigates to share evidence from its investigation.
50 million waste tyres, nearly 700,000 tonnes, are generated every year. Official figures reveal that around half are exported to India with an intention of recycling them. But BBC File on 4 Investigates has found that 70% of the tyres sent to India from the UK and elsewhere end up in makeshift industrial plants. There, they are “cooked” to extract steel small amounts of oil, and carbon black, a powder or pellet used in various industries.
The conditions in the plants are dangerous to humans. Earlier this year, two women and two children died in an explosion at one plant where tyres from Europe were being processed.
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