Major truck tyre supplier appeals to Minister Naughton on the waste legislation

Against a backdrop of frustration due to a lack of what he described as proper representation of the truck tyre sectors position in the negotiations on the new waste regulations relating to the Environmental Disposal Levy (EDL), Mark Kane of Midland Tyre Services Ltd wrote to Minister Denis Naughton last month. See the letter below.

The EU directive for Truck tyres is to recycle/ remould as many as possible to cut down on the overall waste in each & every country throughout the EU. Mark Kane believes that the proposed legislation does not have this in mind for truck tyres & the fact that the Irish Government are promoting a waste process for “All” truck tyres will not be in line with this EU directive. There is no sustainability content & nothing to develop the sustainability of the same in the Irish market in this proposed legislation. There is simply no comparative legislation in other European Truck Tyre markets which are all far greater than the Irish market.

In addition to the estimate that Midland Tyre Services is responsible for about half of all Irish truck tyre sales, Mr. Kane told us that his position is supported by Irish Road Haulage Association (IRHA).

He also says that there was absolutely nothing wrong with truck waste tyres in Ireland until the then Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government issued “Waste collection Permits” to simply anyone that applied. None of these applicants were vetted to see what they intended on doing with the waste tyres & none of them were ever policed to see what they were doing with the waste tyres  following the issue of their “Tyre waste collection Permits”

This basically led to some of these Rogue collectors collecting tyres nationwide & fly tipping wherever they saw fit. For example – they used empty warehouses, disused quarries, fields etc. So in a nutshell, there was never a problem until this point.

The tyre dealers thought they were doing the right thing by allowing these collectors to take their waste, they were invoiced for the disposal of their waste on the basis that they were being disposed of in an environmentally friendly way by the “Registered Waste Collection Permit Holders”. These rogue collectors were handed “Tyre Waste Collection Permits”, got paid by the tyre dealers & just dumped the tyres anywhere could at the cost to the exchequer. The rogue collectors made a lot of money – and nobody policed this. This is what caused the problem, with no blame on the tyre industry.

Getting back to the present, Mr. Kane believes that the new levy on truck tyre waste will put the trade in the Republic of Ireland at a competitive disadvantage. He has no confidence in any sufficient level of enforcement and he believes the planned process is flawed. Here is their letter to Minister Naughton.

LETTER TO THE MINISTER:

Denis P. Naughton TD,
Minister’s Office,
Department for Communications,
Climate Action & Environment,
29-31 Adelaide Road,
Dublin,
D02 X285 18th July 2017

Dear Minister Naughton,

Re: Environmental Disposal Levy (EDL) on Truck Tyres

We write to you to request an urgent audience to represent directly and succinctly the Irish Truck Tyre Trade’s and the Irish Haulage Industry’s position on the forthcoming legislation introducing the EDL for Truck Tyres from the 1st October 2017. Midland Tyres Services Ltd (MTS) accounts for over 50% of Irish truck tyre market and we have the strongest support from a large number of other whole-sellers/distributors as well as our key customer base – the Haulage Industry (represented by the IRHA).

There are a number of critical reasons for seeking a direct audience. These are as follows:

• Repak – the organisation charged with handling the consultation process, have badly mismanaged the  consultation and entirely misrepresented the Truck segment. This was largely by way of lumping of all truck tyre related discussions into the car tyres, so as to mask the specific effects on truck tyres and to drag our  segment along despite radical differences between the two.

• Repak are conflicted by the prospect of drawing revenue from administering the bureaucratic scheme envisaged in the legislation, which despite them being a not-for-profit is vital for covering their ‘sunk cost’ investment into the process and other such material financial factors.

• Repak were given their consultation as well as the ultimate EDL scheme  administration contract, which reportedly enumerates in excess of €20m without the required Legal EU tender process, causing further grievance in the sector.

• Having consulted MTS, as the largest independent player in Irish Truck Tyres, at the beginning of the process, Repak received our full objections as well as a detailed description of our well-established waste disposal solution, which covers itself in terms of cost and results in zero waste with full documentation trail all the way along the process. Repak promised to address our many objections, but instead excluded us from further participation in the consultation, designed to camouflage the effect on Truck Tyres by just lumping this sector with car tyres. The latest in the process was a meeting in the last two weeks that promised to finally deal with our concerns, but instead gave us a fait acompli verdict.

• Our well-established solution has clearly been kept from you and other the decision  makers in the  Department, despite already working for over 60% of the end-of-life truck tyres MTS handles – something that can easily be available to the rest of the segment at no cost to the taxpayer, but with full transparency.

• Our position has always been based on end-of-life Truck Tyres having a value which radically  differentiates this segment from car tyres. This is confirmed by the fact that there was never a waste problem in truck tyres until a waste disposal regime was brought in without proper vetting required for licenced waste collectors,  whereby some of these were completely rogue and frequently ‘dumped’ tyres in warehouses, quarries, skips etc. So where dealers were entirely invested in preventing waste, the process actually created a marginal problem.

• There is already a precedent for exclusion that we are seeking for truck tyres. Agricultural tyres were excluded from the 1st October levy introduction, based on strong representations from the IFA, which focused on  agricultural end-of-life tyres having value – the exact same  argument that holds for truck tyre exclusion.

• The EU directive for Truck tyres is to recycle/remould as many as possible to cut down on the overall waste in each and every country throughout the EU. The proposed legislation does not have this in mind for Truck tyres and the fact that the Irish Government would be promoting a waste process for “ALL” truck tyres will not be in line with this EU directive.  There is no Sustainability content & nothing to develop the Sustainability of the same in the Irish market in this proposed legislation.  Further, countries like Germany have opted for a  solution in line with ours vs. a regulatory scheme along the lines of the proposed legislation.

Above are just some of the key factors, which would heavily damage the Irish truck tyre  distribution and  haulage industries, whist being unaddressed by the Repak process and the contemplated legislation. Hence, we hope that you might understand the urgency in us seeking a direct audience/representation  in order to avoid grave yet unnecessary damage to a market that already has a fully operational and auditable solution.

We expect that we would be joined in this audience by the IHRA, who we believe are in the process of  contacting you directly in writing but along similar lines to the above.

We look forward to your response in due course and hope that an audience may be granted before the legislation is put into effect.

Yours sincerely.

Mark Kane
Director Midland Tyre Services Ltd

Alexei Garan
Director Midland Tyre Services Ltd