Tyre recycling plan halts for consultation
WATER and Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa ’s national tyre recycling plan has been withdrawn amid a storm of controversy, just a week after she launched it in Pretoria.
Private players in the industry had expressed disquiet through the South African Tyre Recycling Process Company (SATRP) over the way the Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of SA (Redisa) plan was gazetted. However, it took the SATRP’s instigation of legal action for the plan to be withdrawn. A court date was set for tomorrow.
At stake is control over an industry that has the potential to bring in more than R600m a year. Tyres are not biodegradable and more than 10-million tyres produced by the local tyre industry are scrapped each year, with an estimated 60-million to 100-million scrap tyres stockpiled in SA.
Tyres pose an environmental problem, as pollutants and as breeding grounds for mosquitoes and vermin.
The tyre manufacture and fitment sector no longer has to sign up to the government plan, which would have imposed a R2,30/kg levy on tyres at import or factory gate, by January 31. The plan will be held in abeyance until at least April 30 — the last day on which the SATRP will be able to resubmit its own tyre recycling plan.
"I have just seen the gazette. It is very good news," SATRP CEO Etienne Human said yesterday.
Performance Monitoring and Evaluation Minister Collins Chabane, acting in Ms Molewa’s stead while she attends the World Economic Forum talks in Davos, withdrew the Redisa plan.
"The withdrawal will afford the department an opportunity to attend to procedural requirements stipulated in the waste tyre regulations. The generali public will have an opportunity to engage and provide input into the Redisa plan, in due course," said Department of Environmental Affairs spokesman Albi Modise.
He said it "must have been an administrative oversight" that the Redisa plan had not been gazetted for public comment.
Mr Human said the SATRP had written several times to the department pointing out that the plan had not been put out for comment to the tyre sector, or the public, both requirements of the regulations. The SATRP was told the department believed it was in the right. [more Business Day]
