If you’ve ever wondered what happens to your old car tyres, you’ve come to the right place. Tyre recycling is a high priority for Halfords with over 600 garages and 340 mobile vans nationwide, contributing to the sale and replacement of 3+million tyres a year.
As a result, environmental performance is a key decision-factor in our waste management partner choices, especially for tyres, which generate 60% of our group’s waste.
How does tyre recycling work?
Car tyre waste is collected and transported from our sites to our waste provider’s regional hubs, where it is then moved to a reprocessing site. 100% of our tyre waste is processed in the UK. 35% of tyres are set for downcycling, with metal extracted and rubber shredded and sold as chippings to be used for sports pitches, carpet underlay, equestrian matting.
There is a limited market for this material, and the remaining 65% of tyres are shredded and sold to become tyre-derived fuel (TDF). This is an energy recovery process that replaces virgin fuel usage with waste tyres to power cement kilns. This is an energy intensive crushing process that grinds raw material into a powered cement that is readily purchased from builders' merchants.
The export of TDF-material is a controlled export of product made via heavily audited Trans-frontier shipments within OECD countries. Our recycling partner ensures recipient facilities are evidenced to operate at equivalent standards to the UK. We are careful to ensure our tyres are not sent to irresponsible processors, or in countries with known challenges with tyre waste (such as India or Pakistan).
For commercial truck market (only), we offer tyre lifespan extending services, including re-grooving or preparation for re-tread. These are ways to safely extend the lifespan of tyres – reducing the consumption of virgin material. Commercial tyres can be retread up to 3 times!
Tyre fees?
We environmentally dispose of all tyres. In 2023, we began charging a separate environmental disposal fee for tyres, which was in line with the rest of the market. Previously we had displayed this price within the cost of tyre
Are there further plans for tyre recycling?
We are tracking exciting technological developments within the tyre market, namely pyrolysis, where multiple parties are significantly investing in UK infrastructure. Once operational, this process will convert waste tyres into four re-usable materials (Metal, gas, oil and recovered carbon black (RCB) – creating a greater recapture of materials available for second life.