RMA marks 20 years of scrap tyre abatement, recycling

ERJ staff report (TB)

Washington DC -- Twenty years ago, the Rubber Manufacturers Association founded the Scrap Tire Management Council, the first organisation in America devoted to developing end-use markets for scrap tyres and cleaning up scrap tyre stockpiles.

Although the STMC has since been absorbed into the RMA, the original mandate for scrap tyre abatement and recycling continues unabated in the organisation, the RMA said.

In 1990, the RMA said, 11 percent of scrap tyres were being recycled annually, and 1 billion lay in stockpiles across the US Now, 86 percent of scrap tyres are being recycled, and stockpiled tyres stand at about 100 million.

“Having achieved major success over the past two decades, RMA and our members have not relented and continue to work with a broad spectrum of scrap tyre industry stakeholders and regulators to ensure that these successes are not reversed,” said RMA President Charles Cannon in a press release.

Lack of information about scrap tyres and the difficulties of market development were the two biggest challenges the tyre industry faced in its scrap tyre efforts in its early years, according to RMA Vice President Michael Blumenthal. Blumenthal has directed the RMA's scrap tyre efforts from the beginning, when he was hired as STMC executive director in 1990.

“One of the very expensive lessons that had to be learned by government agencies was that the scrap tyre industry has always been a demand-pull industry,” Blumenthal said. “Subsidising the supply of processed scrap tyres when the demand for it doesn't exist causes oversupply, falling prices and failing businesses.”

From Rubber & Plastics News (A Crain publication)

Press release from RMA