THE 30 days for public comment on the Integrated Industry Waste Tyre Management Plan expires tomorrow.
The plan was published by the Recycling and Economic Development Initiative South Africa (Redisa), and immediately drew so much flack from the industry that the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs republished it for a 30-day public comment in the Government Gazette, No. 35147 on April 17.
The plan entails moving tyres to depots for eventual recycling, with the moving funded by a levy of R2,30 per kilogram on each tyre sold.
Alex Taplin, the group managing director of Tiger Wheel and Tyre, said the Redisa plan would only start in 2016.
By that stage, it could be assumed that almost R3 billion would have been paid by consumers in levies, he said.
Taplin pointed out that a R400 million investment could create 10 factories to crumb 4 000 car tyres a day, but cautioned that South Africa has no use as yet for crumbed tyres, and asked what the government would do with the extra taxes from tyres that would “certainly exist from now until eternity”.
Jeff Osborne, the Retail Motor Industry Organisation’s chief executive, claimed at the same time its waste-tyre plan was hijacked by Hermann Erdmann, the then national chairperson of the Tyre Dealers’ and Fitment Association (TDAFA) and now the chief executive of Redisa.
Erdmann denied that he had hijacked the TDAFA’s, plan but admitted that he had undertaken to repay the TDAFA for money spent on the plan.
In reaction to a Witness article in January on the plan, “Eishman” posted on our website on January 11 that tyres should become walls of low-cost houses: “Just fill them with soil and bingo, a wall. Many enviromentally friendly people around the world are doing this. There. Tyre recycling sorted in one paragraph.”
(Published in The Witness, May 2012)
