‘They’re piling up everywhere’: Dealers sound the alarm as Ontario recyclers refuse to take tires

Tire dealers are complaining the wheels have fallen off Ontario’s tire recycling programs as scrap rubber piles up in sites around the province.

Some in the industry are pointing to a recent regulation change, as officials are pushing to stop huge numbers of tires from being piled in potentially dangerous spots, being dumped, or even burned.

“Tire dealers, automotive shops, they’re piling up everywhere,” said Adam Moffatt of the Ontario Tire Dealers Association.

“In the thick of the busy season we have tires piling up in large quantities, creating unsafe circumstances,” he said, adding the piles have drawn the attention of municipalities and fire departments as potential fire hazards.

“Some of our members have called us saying that landlords are becoming very upset with the large amount of tires and the potential liability that holds.”

At one site in North York, some 3,000 tires have been stockpiled outside with no tire recycler willing to accept them.

“We’ve got a bunch of scrap tires that need to be recycled with nowhere to go,” said Rich, a tire hauler, as he showed CTV News around the piles of tires.

“The processors are closed. They’re not accepting any tires right now.”

Tire producers have been responsible for recycling tires since 2019, paid for with a consumer fee that varies but averages to about $4.50, Moffatt said.

But in January, the province changed the recovery target for those producers to 85 per cent of the weight they sell to 65 per cent of an averaged weight.

When some recyclers hit that lower target, they stopped accepting new tires.

Ontario’s opposition NDP says those new regulations need to be rolled back, before some people with no legal avenue to move the tires start cutting corners.

“They’re going to end up sending them off for incineration or they may end up in a ravine near you,” said Tom Rakocevic, the MPP for Humber River-Black Creek.

“This is a perfect example of bad planning by this government, a lack of planning and foresight.”

A not-for-profit producer responsibility organization (PRO) set up by the province to manage tire-recycling told CTV News it’s been working hard to fill the gaps.

“To eTrack’s knowledge all have stopped or significantly reduced tire pick ups over the course of a few months. eTracks has been absorbing much higher volumes for months now, resulting from this shift,” wrote eTracks’ VP Melissa Carlaw in an email.

“eTracks has collected far above its proportionate share of tires across the province. There is a backlog because there is no guidance or precedent set for dealing with this and it is not possible for one organization—eTracks—to reasonably absorb the costs, or keep up in the absence of other organizations doing their part.”

Gary Wheeler of the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks told CTV News that it’s working with the Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority who oversees Ontario’s producer responsibility framework to address disruptions to the collection and processing of end-of-life tires.

The producer targets will reset at the beginning of the calendar year, said Moffatt, and while that could prompt some producers to start taking tires again, it’s not a long-term fix.

That’s because any stockpiled tires will count towards next year’s targets, which means the targets could be met much earlier, leaving tire retailers with even bigger piles next year, he said.