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[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]...Scrap tires are a bulky waste and are hard to handle with normal solid waste equipment. When buried in a landfill tires tend to "float" to the surface over time and disrupt landfill covers as well as landfill gas and leachate collection systems. When stockpiled, large piles of tires are excellent breeding grounds for mosquitos and vermin. Although tires by themselves are not hazardous, fires in tire piles are very hard to extinguish and produce both toxic smoke and runoff...[/FONT]
Tires Pile Up at Billings, Mont., Landfill - Science News - redOrbit[/FONT]...Millions of tires are winding up in garbage dumps — or illegal tire dumps..
...Last year {2004}, roughly 325 tons of spent tires were buried at the Billings landfill...
...
Burning rubber may be a quaint colloquial expression, but when it comes to disposing of used tires, there is hardly anything innocuous about the term. Aside from its political context, which seems to be an almost obligatory form of protest in certain troubled parts of the world, the uncontrolled burning of tires is dangerous, environmentally destructive, and a health hazard.
Today's tires are largely synthetic, and improper burning can release various carcinogenic compounds such as styrene and butadiene...
The government trade-in program requires that the engines of the clunkers be killed. More accustomed to fixing cars, mechanics will pour in a solvent called "liquid glass," then run the engine until it seizes.
From an economic perspective, that's a waste, says Sanderson, who calls the program "silly." The autos required labor and resources to build. Consider a similar program to replace old light bulbs with more efficient ones, he says. Would you smash the old bulbs?
Sanderson admits that there is some environmental benefit to the clunkers program. "The question is at what cost," he says. "For $3 billion, could we do something better for the environment than what we're doing? I think absolutely. It's a very inefficient expenditure."
The SMMT has just published the UK motor industry's eighth annual Sustainability Report, and it reveals how the industry has improved its performance on a range of environmental indicators. At vehicle manufacturing sites energy consumption and CO2 emissions have been cut, water use has been halved and far less waste is being sent to landfill. For motor industry products, the report paints a similar picture; CO2 and other tailpipe emissions continue to fall.
Key points include:
- Annual CO2 emissions from UK car and CV manufacturing have fallen 36.5 per cent, from 2.14 to 1.36 million tonnes in just four years
- Energy used to make each vehicle fell from a high of 4.3 MWh/unit in 2001 to 2.5 MWh/unit in 2006
- CO2 per vehicle produced came down from a high of 1.3 tonnes in 2001 to 0.7 tonnes in 2006
- Water use per vehicle produced has been cut from 6.2 m3 in 2001 to 3.3 m3 last year
- Total combined waste to landfill down by more than half, from 80,399 tonnes in 2000 to 39,862 tonnes last year
- Average new car CO2 has dropped 12 per cent in a decade, from 189.9g/km to 167.2g/km saving an estimated one million tonnes of CO2 each year.
I'm not a big fan of this program as it's currently structured. Given it's popularity, I think it could have been implemented with more restrictions promoting even greater fuel economy.
...such rebates are a spectacularly inefficient way to implement environmental policy.