Tyre-dump mountain poses growing threat

29th April 2009

Doug Laing

Waste rubber disposal experts are horrified that authorities allowed a mountain of tyres to grow to such an extent it is now an environmental risk to Napier.

Both Auckland-based Jim Laughton, of J and J Laughton Shredding Services, and Waikato-Bay of Plenty operator Richard Linthwaite, of Waste Tyre Solutions, said they warned authorities of the potential risks in price undercutting, which led to the Pandora tyre mountain building up.

It has become a major headache for Land Information New Zealand, which is now investigating how to dispose of the mountain of as many as 100,000 tyres on the 5ha Crown-owned block of land at the southern end of Mersey St.

Estimated taxpayer costs of removal and disposal are now being put at more than $500,000. Both operators said it was a disgrace and "now it's too late".

The tyres were bought and gathered by The Retyred Tyre Company and stored by East Coast Exporters, with the intention of sending the tyres to China for recycling.

But that never happened. East Coast Exporters collapsed and this week director Bill Lambert, of Napier, was sentenced in the Environment Court to 350 hours' community work for failing to comply with an abatement order to stop storing the tyres collected from around the country.

Judge Craig Thompson said it was deliberate and reckless.

Mr Laughton described the penalty as a "wet bus-ticket".

But, like Mr Linthwaite, he said the laws were at fault, with "product stewardship" for tyres still a voluntary exercise.

The Waste Minimisation Act 2008 had agricultural chemicals, used oil and refrigerant gases as priority products for mandatory stewardship, and excluded tyres, computers and television sets, mobile phones, paints and other contaminants now cleared in voluntary schemes.

An Environment Ministry discussion document said: "Tyres were not selected for investigation as a priority product because the potential harm is less than the other products selected."

It's the biggest stockpile in New Zealand since the removal of a Waikato tyre mountain four years ago, and were the Pandora tyre mountain to catch fire evacuations of extensive areas of Napier would be necessary because of the toxic fumes which would drift across the city.

Mr Linthwaite, whose company gathers more than 3000 of an estimated 7000 to 10,000 used tyres taken out of Hawke's Bay for disposal each month, said people still underestimated the size of the problem.

"We can only hope it doesn't get worse before it gets better," Mr Linthwaite said.

A 3m security fence has been put across one face of the Pandora mountain to keep people out.

Land Information said it expected it would be another month before a decision was made on what would be done with the mountain of tyres.