Environmental Contribution for screpped tires
Environmental Contribution for screpped tires
13/09/2011

With the new Art. 228 of Law Act 152/2006, Italy has entered into the EU regulation about used tires recycling and dismantelling.
Since June 9th, it is mandatory for tire manufacturers and importers/distributors to take care of dismantelling and/or recycling a volume of used and scrapped tires comparable to the volume of new tires sold (or introduced in their national market) by them. They can do it by themselves, or associating into some cooperative business, and must fulfill it every year.
According to Ecopneus (a consortium made by the 7 biggest tire manufacturers and importers in Italy) "the environmental contribution is not a tax, but it's the necessary amount to help the process of completely dismantelling used and scrapped tires. It is like rationalizing a cost that drivers have been already paying for, since long time. That cost will only be made clear compared to the tire purchase price: it will be paid only by the ones who purchase tires, and it will be addressed only to support used tires collection and recycling operation, under tight control of the Department of Environment. As of today, tire shops and service stations have paid some certain amount to the subject who collected their used tire stocks. As such, that cost has been always included in management costs for those businesses, as well as other fixed costs included in the business. With this new regulation, the cost simply is separated and clearly stated in the invoice, so that it becomes easily traceable and controllable by everybody".
Ecopneus is expected to manage most part of the 380.000 tons of scrapped tires ending their life every year in Italy, and ensure their collection, dismantelling in proper plants and ricovery of their related materials to recycle them in other businesses.
According to a census performed by Legambiente, between 2005 and 2010, 1049 illegal dump sites have been discovered in our national territory, covering more than 6milions sqm of scrapped tires.