Setting the record straight
The Irish Times published an article on Monday, December 7th, which presents how the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government or Repak ELT see the new Government compliance scheme for waste tyres. The validity of the claims is not challenged in the article and more disappointing, the article appears not to be researched, not balanced, no right of reply or response offered to others with alternative opinions.
Therefore we feel obligated to bring the balance to this by outlining the facts as we see them through experienced eyes and to avail of this opportunity to set the record straight in certain areas on this important issue. The article is in black with Padraic Deane’s comments in red.
Recycling scheme to oversee tyre disposal in Republic
(It is not a recycling scheme – it’s a compliance scheme)
Repak ELT will also help clean up estimated 10 to 15 million waste tyres in illegal dumps.
There are no statistics to back this up and the newspaper just accepts it from a new Government quango that has been chosen to operate the new Government scheme. The provision of this service was not put out to tender by the Department of Environment, Community and Local Government (DECLG), which I’m sure most journalists would find very suspicious and very unusual to bypass that process these days.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a reputable body with no vested interest (political or commercial) is on the record as saying of tyres in illegal dumps – “the figures are negligible”.
PICTURE CAPTION: The recycling scheme will not involve a new charge or tax on motorists.
The new Government Scheme does involve a new tax on motorists of €2.80 + VAT which is €3.44 (if as expected VAT is applied at 23%). There is no existing tax, so of course it’s a ‘New Tax’ on motorists, which amounts to €13.44, if you buy four tyres for your car from next summer.
It is interesting and hardly a coincidence that the new tax will not be applied until next summer, coming after the General Election, despite Repak ELT being operational since November 1st. 2015. We believe that the haulage industry will likely pay the new tax of up to €15 per tyre (+ VAT) with farmers paying about €30 (+ VAT) for a back tractor tyre.
A new recycling scheme will from next year oversee the disposal of all waste tyres in the Republic.
Again – it is not a recycling scheme – compliance scheme. The Repak ELT website says that it is in Phase one of the scheme, which is being used as a transition period to prepare the industry, for the introduction of a PRI in phase two. PRI stands for Producer Responsibility Initiative. There is no such scheme as this Repak ELT one offered in any other country in the EU. It is clearly not a PRI by definition or by its planned operation.
How can it be a manufacturer’s initiative when they didn’t set it up? They all refused approaches to be directors of Repak ELT and so on. It is simply a new Government scheme, operated by a new quango that was given their role without a competitive process, and who will collect a new high tax on tyres, that residents, businesses and farmers in Northern Ireland will not be paying.
Repak End of Life Tyres will also contribute to the costs of disposing of an estimated 10 to 15 million tyres stockpiled in illegal dumps, warehouses and on farms across the State.
Again as outlined earlier – there is no evidence of anything like these numbers. Any large tyre dumps that have been identified were assembled by tyre collectors that were licenced by the Department of Environment, Community and Local Government (DECLG).
Repak or Repak ELT will not contribute anything to collect or clean-up any tyres hoarded by those Government licenced collectors.
They may use part of this new tax they collect to tidy up the results of the reckless behaviour of the DECLG in handing out waste tyre collection licences to practically anyone that sought one. And if it does, be very clear it is Irish motorists, truck owners and farmers that will end up funding it!
The initiative will not involve a new charge or tax on motorists, who already pay a levy on new tyres to fund safe disposal.
As stated above – there has been no tax on waste tyre disposal to date, so it is a new tax on motorists, businesses that have vans, trucks, etc. and farmers, contractors and others that use tractors, heavy machinery, etc.
The previous experience was that most tyre retailers charged up to €2 to pay for car tyre disposal. This money was passed on to the licenced tyre collectors, and recycling outlets, and a small fee to the Tyre Recovery Activity Compliance Scheme (TRACS), which recorded the statistics and managed the scheme.
This is largely confirmed in a DEPOTEC Life+ End of Project Workshop presentation given on Wednesday 25th November, 2015 Tyres and Waste Tyres, by Philip Nugent Principal Officer Waste Policy & Resource Efficiency Department of the Environment, Community & Local Government.
He stated that: “The €2 recycling levy paid by the consumer was broken down in to €1 to a licenced collector & €1 to a recycling facility.”
Many truck owners and farmers paid no disposal fee to tyre retailers, and the tyre trade had in practice to fund disposal of such tyres from their retail profit margin. The requested fee absorbed by retailers to cover collection, recycling and administration was up to €8 for a truck tyre.
See the latest views of the Irish Road Haulage Association and Freight Transport Association of Ireland on the new tyre tax (and the rate to be charged for truck tyres) elsewhere in this issue.
The scheme will operate as Repak ELT, a separate entity to Repak’s current recycling business. It replaces earlier attempts to track tyre imports and impose recycling – the latest was found to have a non-compliance rate of 46 per cent.
The previous scheme (TRACS) was set up in 2007. It operated according to best practice but it was amazingly thwarted on an ongoing basis by the Department (DECLG) that approved it in the first place under the Waste Management (Tyres and Waste Tyres) Regulations 2007. Firstly, as outlined above, the DECLG gave waste collector licenses to practically anyone who applied for them and then it didn’t monitor the licensees.
It also authorised a second scheme in 2009, with no synthesis reporting protocol put in place by the DECLG so that they and the EPA would get a single national report on waste tyres arisings and the ultimate treatment of these arisings.
This precluded any benchmarking or setting of national waste collection targets. So the Department (DECLG) designed the system to ultimately fail!
On top of that it provided very little or no enforcement to support TRACS. The deficiency highlighted by RTE’s Primetime programme in 2010 was the lack of enforcement of the Waste Management Act legislation by those charged with the legal responsibility and obligation to do so.
Each of the 5 companies/individuals highlighted by Primetime had a valid waste tyre collection permit issued by their respective Local Authority. The tyre shops who paid these collectors to dispose of the waste had every right to expect that their waste would be dealt with in an environmentally appropriate manner. However, with no oversight or enforcement of waste obligations, these collectors were allowed to act with impunity. And again, it will be taxpayers that will provide the funds to clean up any waste tyres that have been dumped.
TRACS had a stellar record of monitoring and tracking tyre waste arisings on behalf of the Industry from 2008 through 2014.
The waste arisings calculated by TRACS which were benchmarked against CSO figures show 72 per cent of the waste accounted for in 2010.
That compares with Repak Limited, the sole approved compliance scheme for the recovery of packaging waste in Ireland, achieved a packaging waste recovery rate of 74 per cent in 2010.
If a synthesis report wasavailable, surely the figures from TWM and the Self Compliance Scheme would add considerably to this figure. No attempt was made by the RPS Review to examine or understand the anomaly between the TRACS figure and the EPA figure. Benchmarked against CSO numbers for the same period the TRACS report shows waste arisings accounted for as follows: 82% 2011, 90% 2012 and 83% for 2013 respectively (source TRACS annual report).
A review found there was a lack of consistent data on what happened used tyres collected from the motor industry, with between 25 and 50 per cent going missing.
Previously, numerically, 50 per cent of the economic operators may not have registered with a Compliance Scheme. Delving in to the numbers, for the most part, this 50 per cent is accounted for by crash repair shops, small garages, pre-NCT shops and main dealers who are casually involved in fitting tyres, i.e. not their main business.
In no way does this numerical 50 per cent represent 50 per cent of the tyres placed on the market which is what one would infer from this reference made by RPS and in turn by the Minister.
Enforcement authorities
A number of local authorities have been nominated as waste- enforcement regional local authorities – Werlas – to police the new system. These include Cork City Council (that was subsequently corrected to Cork County Council) for the south and southwest region, Dublin City for the midlands and east, and Leitrim and Donegal, which will jointly police the west and northwest.
It would be great if this aspiration about enforcement became a reality. However, first of all from our discussions with people in local authorities, they have confirmed that they have less people doing more since the downturn in 2008. The overwhelming feeling is that there is no likelihood of additional roles of this nature being operated to any level of success. Of course, they will go after the low hanging fruit – those legitimate businesses that abide by the law (but who object to this new Government tax). However, there will be no appetite to enter into difficult and drawn-out process with hundreds of others that may not be so accessible.
From next year industry importers will pay Repak ELT €2.80 for every car tyre imported into Ireland.
The new Government tax on motorists is not €2.80 but rather €2.80 + VAT which is €3.44 (if as expected VAT is applied at 23 per cent).
That amounts to €13.44 extra tax (in addition to 23 per cent VAT on your tyres), if you have four tyres fitted to your car from next summer.
No such tax exists in Northern Ireland, so the potential of major losses to trade in Northern Ireland and taxes to the Revenue Commissioners is great. It will be even greater when the high rates of tax on truck and agricultural tyres are announced – probably after the General Election!
I hope that we have set the record straight, adding balance to points and claims made in the article as well as clarifying a great deal of misinformation that is out there.