CLEVER legal footwork will soon see SA drivers pay a levy of some
R2,30 per kilogram on each new tyre they buy.
This after the Minister for Water and Environmental Affairs, Edna
Molewa, approved, at the end of December, the Recycling and Economic Development
Initiative SA (Redisa) Waste Tyre Management Plan for immediate implementation.
The plan replaces the Redisa plan that was suspended in terms of an
interdict granted on November 20.
Hermann Erdmann, Redisa CEO, said by re-gazetting an altered plan,
the minister is “bringing sanity back into the tyre market”.
This means the estimated 11 million scrap tyres produced in SA
every year will be moved to Redisa 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,
told The Witness in May that 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 SA 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”.
