Britain’s Tyre Recovery Association has slammed the waste compliance standards of some signatories to the Basel Convention at this year’s European Tyre Recycling Association Conference taking place in Brussels this week.
Explaining his association’s criticism, association director, Peter Taylor, complained that signatories to the Convention were simply allowed to “mark their own homework” in some member states. Even when expected norms of ‘equivalence’ were agreed, local compliance and enforcement standards frequently fell well short of what they should be.
“We have a right to expect that when our waste tyres are exported for perfectly legitimate forms of recycling that all receiving countries meet UK standards as the convention assumes equivalency across all nations.”
He continued, “Although end-of-life tyres are a so-called ‘green’ list waste so subject to less rigorous documentation and tracking than ‘amber’ or ‘red’ list flows, this should not simply open a door to unacceptable practices. Sadly, in certain countries it is now clear that internationally agreed norms may be routinely flouted.
As a nation and as an industry, we can and must address such issues. The TRA is moving to further strengthen its member audit and best practice norms but cannot succeed alone. Help from several directions is needed.
We call on the UK government as well as regulators in all exporting and receiving countries to look to their own surveillance and standards, improve them, if necessary, but most important of all, enforce them robustly.”