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Blog, whitepapers, webinars and intelligence on regulation and trends in the end-of-life tyre industry.

Who is who in the sector

The map of end-of-life tyre management in Mexico

If you are new to this, these are the players you will run into. We have gathered the essentials on each one so you do not have to assemble the puzzle piece by piece.

Trade representation

National Chamber of the Rubber Industry (CNIH)

Trade body founded in 1943 representing the natural and synthetic rubber industry in Mexico. It brings together tyre makers, rubber goods manufacturers and associate members. In 2026 it published the study Phase 0: Diagnosis of End-of-Life Tyres and it organises Expo Hule.

Collective management plan

Responsible Used Tyre Management Association (AMRLU)

Non-profit civil association that operates the Waste Tyre Management Plan (Waste Tyre Management Plan), in force since March 2014. It publishes the adhesion protocol, the membership application and the good-practice manual for collection centres. Also known as Reciclallantas.

Federal authority

SEMARNAT

Mexico's federal environmental authority. It issued NOM-161-SEMARNAT-2011, which defines which special-handling wastes require a management plan and who must file one. It is the body a large generator answers to for the fate of its waste.

Territorial management

Municipal and state governments

Responsible for waste management in their territory and for dealing with illegal dumps. Several states have their own standards — for example NADF-024-AMBT-2013 in Mexico City.

Regulatory framework

What the law requires, in plain language

Reference summary. It does not replace legal advice or reading the official text published in Mexico's Federal Official Gazette.

Federal standard

NOM-161-SEMARNAT-2011

Sets the criteria for classifying special-handling waste and determines which types require a management plan. Used tyres are on the list. It applies above all to large generators: those producing 10 tonnes or more a year.

Penalties

LGPGIR · article 112

Mexico's General Law for the Prevention and Integral Management of Waste provides for fines of up to 50,000 UMA for non-compliance, plus the possible temporary closure of facilities.

Collective instrument

Waste Tyre Management Plan

Collective instrument in force since 1 March 2014, operated by AMRLU with the participation of CNIH. It sets out guidelines for producers, importers, distributors, retailers and large generators.

Local standard

NADF-024-AMBT-2013

Mexico City environmental standard on waste separation, classification and selective collection. An example of how local regulation stacks on top of federal rules.

Before you buy the machine

Permits for an end-of-life tyre plant in Mexico

Almost everything published about opening an end-of-life tyre (ELT) plant is about the machine. The paperwork that decides whether the plant opens — and above all when — is almost never published. This is the map: what the law says, with article and date, and who authorises what.

What the law already says

LGPGIR · Article 19, section X

«Used tyres»

Since the reform published in Mexico’s official gazette on 4 June 2014, used tyres are their own category of special-handling waste. Before that they had to be inferred from the transport-services category. That change is what opens the door to everything else.

LGPGIR · Article 28, section III

«…as well as importers and distributors of used tyres, under the principles of recovery and shared responsibility»

The duty to draw up and run a Management Plan does not fall on the generator alone. By express wording it also falls on whoever imports and distributes. If you sell tyres, the law has already named you.

NOM-161-SEMARNAT-2011 · Normative annex

«Waste tyres»

They appear twice in the list of wastes subject to a Management Plan: under heading IV, waste from federal and public transport; and under VIII (c), end-of-life products generated by a large generator in quantities above 10 tonnes per waste stream per year. That threshold is what decides who is bound and who is not.

Who authorises what

This is where most of the time is lost, because intuition misleads: the authority that licenses your plant is not SEMARNAT.

The state

LGPGIR · Article 9, section III

The law gives the states the power to «authorise the integral management of special-handling waste». Each state publishes its own procedures and its own deadlines, and they do not resemble each other. In Hidalgo, for instance, they sit in the state’s single registry of procedures and services.

Aquí vive

Your operating authorisation, your generator registration and the approval of your Management Plan.

The municipality

LGPGIR · Article 10

Its legal mandate is urban solid waste, not special-handling waste. It does not license your plant — but without it there is no operation, and land use is the one item on this list that can render an already-purchased site useless.

Aquí vive

Compatible land use, operating licence and civil-protection sign-off.

The federal government

SEMARNAT · LGEEPA

It enters through three doors: when hazardous waste is involved, when the activity falls in a federally regulated sector — chemicals and hazardous-waste treatment among them — or when the works require federal environmental impact assessment.

Aquí vive

Single Environmental Licence, hazardous-waste authorisations and federal environmental impact assessment.

The layer almost nobody anticipates: pyrolysis

If the project is pyrolysis, the oil it produces falls under the petroleum-products regime, and that regime recently changed hands. The Hydrocarbons Sector Law, published on 18 March 2025, created the National Energy Commission (CNE), which absorbed the functions of the former CRE and CNH; its regulations were published on 3 October 2025. Permits already granted by the CRE stay valid until their term ends. Almost every guide circulating online still says «CRE».

Why the schedule falls apart

None of these procedures is hard on its own. The problem is different: they do not run in parallel. Several cannot even be filed until another one resolves, and that is written down nowhere — each authority publishes its own deadline, none publishes the chain. An ELT project accumulates filings across all three levels of government, and that is where the year goes, not at customs with the machine.

There is a second oversight, cheap to fix and expensive to discover late: your plant is a generator too. The steel, the fibre and the fines coming out of the process are waste, with their own registration and their own logbook. Being authorised to receive is not enough.

This map is public on purpose: we want the sector to understand it. The critical path — what enables what, what should be filed first and in which order — depends on the project and is not settled by reading a web page. There are environmental permitting firms that walk it with you, and some equipment makers that build it into the project. One of them publishes a free diagnostic that estimates how many filings apply to you and before which authorities.

See the permitting diagnostic →

Legal framework · Latin America

Tyre law across the region’s 20 countries

ELTrack does not invent an obligation: it hangs off the ones that already exist. This is the regulatory map of the end-of-life tyre across the twenty countries of Latin America, with instrument and date.

Mexico

General Circular Economy Law

Official gazette · 19 January 2026

Who it binds

Producers and importers, through the Extended Producer Responsibility introduced by article 36.

The mechanism

The producer is environmentally responsible for its product across its life cycle, «under the Circular Management it registers with the Ministry». The law also creates a public Circular Economy Registry.

Who enforces

SEMARNAT. The regulations and the 2026-2030 National Programme are still in process; plastics are the first sector named.

LGPGIR (waste law)

Last amended · 19 January 2026

Who it binds

Large generators and, by the express wording of article 28 section III, importers and distributors of used tyres.

The mechanism

Article 19 section X makes the used tyre its own category of special-handling waste, with a Management Plan duty.

Who enforces

The state authorises integral management (art. 9 s. III). Fines up to 50,000 UMA (art. 112 s. V).

NOM-161-SEMARNAT-2011

Normative annex, headings IV and VIII (c)

Who it binds

Large generators above 10 tonnes per waste stream per year, plus federal and public transport.

The mechanism

«Waste tyres» appears twice in the list of wastes subject to a Management Plan. That threshold decides who is bound.

Who enforces

SEMARNAT sets the list; the states request additions and removals.

North and Central America

EPR with numeric targetsTyre-specific regimeGeneral waste framework onlyNo specific regime found

🇬🇹

Guatemala

Government Agreement 164-2021, amended by 184-2023

Integral management of common solid waste, with circular-economy principles. No tyre-specific regime.

🇭🇳

Honduras

Integral Solid Waste Management Regulation · Agreement 1567-2010

Used tyres are classified as special waste. Collection and disposal fall on the municipalities.

🇸🇻

El Salvador

National Plan for the Integral Management of Waste Tyres

A dedicated national tyre plan, aligned with the Integral Waste Management and Recycling Promotion Act.

🇳🇮

Nicaragua

No specific regime found

We found no national instrument dedicated to end-of-life tyres. The general solid waste framework applies.

🇨🇷

Costa Rica

Waste Tyre Regulation · Decree 33745-S (2007)

The generator hands the used tyre to the seller when replacing it. Enforced by the Health Ministry; MINAE drives EPR under the integral waste law.

🇵🇦

Panama

Recycled-rubber asphalt bill — in process

1.3 million tyres a year are discarded, with an estimated 30% ending up loose in the environment. The bill was passed, objected to by the executive, and passed again with changes.

The Caribbean

🇨🇺

Cuba

No specific regime found

We found no national instrument dedicated to end-of-life tyres.

🇩🇴

Dominican Republic

Law 225-20 on Integral Management and Co-processing of Solid Waste

Tyres are named as a priority waste. The law bans open dumps and mandates a transition to a circular economy.

🇭🇹

Haiti

No specific regime found

We found no national instrument dedicated to end-of-life tyres.

South America

🇦🇷

Argentina

Resolutions 523/2013 and 522/2016 · Law 25,626 (2002)

523/2013 sets guidelines but, being a ministerial resolution, does not bind the provinces. Law 25,626 does ban importing used tyres. The national ELT bill is still unpassed.

🇧🇴

Bolivia

Law 755 on Integral Waste Management

Tyres appear among products whose use generates regulated waste, with no dedicated regime.

🇧🇷

Brazil

CONAMA Resolution 416 (30 September 2009)

A 1:1 ratio: for every new tyre sold into the replacement market, one unserviceable tyre must be properly disposed of. Applies to makers and importers of tyres over 2 kg. Annual declaration to IBAMA.

🇨🇱

Chile

Law 20,920 · EPR Law, targets decree in force since 2023

Binding collection and recovery targets stepping up to 2030 — the decree reaches 90% collection. The Environment Superintendency inspects and fines.

🇨🇴

Colombia

Resolution 1326 of 2017

Selective Collection Systems. What must be collected is calculated on the average placed on the market over the two preceding years. ANLA approves and verifies.

🇪🇨

Ecuador

Agreement MAATE-2022-131

Instructions for applying Extended Producer Responsibility to the integral management of end-of-life tyres.

🇵🇾

Paraguay

Law 3956/2009 and Decree 7391/2017

ELTs are special solid waste. Whoever sells and fits the tyre must take back the old one, and the consumer must hand it over. Municipalities are responsible for collection and disposal. MADES enforces.

🇵🇪

Peru

Supreme Decree 024-2021-MINAM · Special ELT Regime

The second Special Regime under Legislative Decree 1278. Requires differentiated ELT handling under extended producer responsibility.

🇺🇾

Uruguay

Decree 358/015 (28 December 2015)

Manufacturers and importers must hold or join a master plan to take back tyres from consumers. Excludes those imported fitted to vehicles.

🇻🇪

Venezuela

No specific regime found

We found no national instrument dedicated to end-of-life tyres.

Twenty countries, twenty different answers — and a single point of agreement: every one obliges somebody to prove where the tyre went, and none of them supplies the mechanism to prove it. The law says «demonstrate»; it does not say how. Six countries already have numeric targets and four have nothing yet, but the gap is identical from Tijuana to Ushuaia.

The raw material

Where the rubber in a tyre actually comes from

Before talking about recycling it, it helps to know what it is made of. A tyre is not «rubber»: it is a compound of between ten and twenty different materials, engineered specifically not to fall apart. That is exactly why it is so hard to process.

Plant origin

Natural rubber

Latex from the Hevea brasiliensis tree, native to the Amazon but today grown mostly in South-East Asia — Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam account for most of world production. It resists tearing and sheds heat better, which is why it dominates in truck and heavy-machinery tyres.

Fossil origin

Synthetic rubber

Petroleum-derived. The most common are SBR (styrene-butadiene) and BR (polybutadiene). They can be tuned at will: more wet grip, lower rolling resistance, longer life. A modern passenger tyre carries more synthetic than natural rubber.

The reinforcing filler

Carbon black and silica

Carbon black is near-pure carbon made by burning hydrocarbons with very little air. It is what makes a tyre black and what gives it half its strength. Silica partly replaces it in low-rolling-resistance tyres. Recovering this material is the real prize in tyre recycling.

What makes it hard to recycle

Sulphur and vulcanisation

In 1839 Charles Goodyear found that heating rubber with sulphur made it elastic and stable. That reaction — vulcanisation — creates permanent chemical bridges between the polymer chains. It is not reversible by ordinary means: this is why a tyre cannot be melted and remoulded the way a plastic bottle can.

The skeleton

Steel and textiles

Between 10 and 15 % of the weight of a passenger tyre is steel — the bead and the belts — and a smaller fraction is textile fibre, usually polyester or nylon. In a truck tyre steel can exceed 20 %. It is separated magnetically and sold as scrap.

And the rest

Oils, waxes and activators

Zinc oxide, stearic acid, antioxidants, process oils and accelerators. Small by weight, but they explain why an abandoned tyre pollutes: as it degrades it releases metals and organic compounds into soil and water.

What can be done with it

The six recovery routes

There is no single way to recover an end-of-life tyre, and they are not worth the same. Ordered from most to least value retained — which does not always match what is most profitable in Latin America today.

Route	What it involves	Product	Where it ends up
Retreading	The tread is replaced on a casing that is still sound. It retains the most value, because the tyre goes on being a tyre.	Retreaded tyre	Freight fleets, buses, aviation
Shredding and granulation	Mechanical size reduction at ambient temperature down to 0.5–4 mm particles, with steel and textile separated out.	Crumb rubber	Artificial turf, sports flooring, rubberised asphalt, moulded parts
Micronisation	Fine milling, sometimes cryogenic — using liquid nitrogen — for a cleaner, more uniform particle. The finer it is, the higher the price.	Rubber powder, graded by mesh	Modified asphalt, coatings, adhesives, shoe soles
Devulcanisation	Selectively breaks the sulphur bridges so the rubber can be processed again. Thermal, mechanical, chemical or ultrasonic.	Reclaimed rubber	Goes back into new rubber compounds
Pyrolysis	Thermal decomposition without oxygen. It breaks the polymer and separates its fractions.	Oil, recovered carbon black, steel, gas	See the next section
Energy recovery	The tyre’s calorific value is used as an alternative fuel. Tyre chip has a calorific value comparable to coal.	TDF · tyre derived fuel	Cement kilns, paper mills, steelworks

Tyres are also used whole or coarsely shredded in civil engineering — retaining walls, lightweight embankments, artificial reefs — known as TDA (Tyre Derived Aggregate). It is the lowest value per tonne, but it absorbs large volumes and needs almost no transformation.

The route that raises the most questions

Pyrolysis, explained without the smoke

It is the technology people talk about most and the one surrounded by the most bad information. It is worth understanding properly before investing in it.

What it is. Heating the tyre to between 400 and 600 °C in the absence of oxygen. With no oxygen there is no combustion: the polymer does not burn, it breaks. Long chains split into smaller molecules, which separate into three streams plus the steel.

Typical yield, by weight

Tyre pyrolysis oil · TPO35–45%

A dark liquid with high calorific value. Used as industrial fuel or, refined, as a chemical feedstock. It is usually the fraction that pays for the operation.

Recovered carbon black · rCB35–45%

The carbonaceous solid. This is where the real value — and the real difficulty — sits. ASTM D8178 distinguishes the material straight out of the reactor (raw recovered carbon black) from rCB proper, which requires intensive milling and removal of steel and fibre.

Tyre pyrolysis gas · TPG15–30%

Non-condensable. In a well-designed plant it is recirculated to heat the reactor itself, so the process largely feeds its own energy demand.

In favour

It recovers material, not just energy

Unlike TDF, pyrolysis returns materials that can re-enter industry. If the rCB reaches substitution quality it displaces virgin carbon black — which is itself made by burning hydrocarbons. That is the strong environmental argument.

Against

The quality of the solid decides everything

Raw rCB carries between 5 and 20 % inorganic ash plus residual sulphur. Without serious milling and classification it is not carbon black: it is char, and char is worth a fraction. Most pyrolysis projects fail right here, not at the reactor.

The question to ask

Who buys the output?

The bottleneck is almost never technological. Before buying equipment you need a contracted buyer for the oil and someone who will qualify the rCB. A working reactor with no buyer is an expensive warehouse.

Permits

Not an ordinary plant

In Mexico, waste pyrolysis requires federal environmental authorisation, and handling the oil has its own regime. Permitting is long: start the paperwork before the construction.

How the rest of the world handles it

The international map

Latin America is not inventing anything here: there are three proven models and a couple of dozen countries that have run them for twenty years. It is worth knowing which one resembles what is coming.

Model	How it works	Who pays	Examples
Extended producer responsibility	The law obliges manufacturers and importers to take care of the product at end of life. They group into a non-profit body that organises collection.	A visible fee when the new tyre is bought	Spain, Italy, France, Portugal, the Netherlands
Shared responsibility · free market	No central body. Every actor who touches the tyre answers for their leg of it and the market allocates the flows.	The generator, through a handling fee	United States
State-administered scheme	A public body collects a tax or levy and contracts collection and processing.	A tax on tyre sales	Several Canadian provinces, some Brazilian states

Mexico currently operates a management-plan scheme derived from NOM-161-SEMARNAT-2011, closer to the first model but without a mandatory point-of-sale fee. Any future reform towards full EPR would radically change the size of the market.

Global coordination

WBCSD · Tire Industry Project

An initiative of the major tyre manufacturers within the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. It publishes reference frameworks and toolkits for designing ELT management systems, and is the most cited source in the sector.

Europe

ETRMA

European Tyre and Rubber Manufacturers’ Association. It represents the European tyre and rubber industry and publishes the continent’s recovery figures each year.

United States

USTMA

U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association. Operates under the shared-responsibility model and publishes the periodic scrap tire management report for the US market.

Spain

SIGNUS · TNU

SIGNUS was set up in 2005 by the leading manufacturers and has operated since 2006. It is the most cited reference in Spanish and the model most often raised when reform is discussed in Latin America.

Italy

Ecopneus

A non-profit consortium. It has taken Italian collection rates to very high levels and publishes its annual performance openly.

France

Aliapur

Created by the manufacturers present in France. Notable for committing a declared share of its annual budget to research into new applications.

Netherlands

RecyBEM

Runs the Dutch system through a recycling fee applied to new tyre sales.

Australia

Tyre Stewardship Australia

An accredited voluntary stewardship scheme, with a strong focus on developing end markets for recovered rubber.

Europe, twenty years ahead

Europe by the numbers

When somebody asks whether this works, the answer is not an opinion: it is Europe having done it for twenty years.

3.9 milliontonnes of ELTs generated in Europe in 2024ETRMA / Tyres Europe

97%treatment rate: practically everything is collectedETRMA, data from 32 countries

10% to 60%growth in annual material recoveryETRMA

The four with the longest track record

🇪🇸

Spain

SIGNUS

Non-profit, funded by an eco-fee

·220,000 t managed in 2025

·2026 eco-fee: €1.80 per passenger tyre, €12.29 per truck tyre

·Target of 65% recycling and material recovery by 2035

🇮🇹

Italy

Ecopneus

Operating since 2011

·~400,000 t a year of car, truck and motorcycle tyres

·More than 2 million t cumulative

·~€2 million a year in research and development

🇫🇷

France

Aliapur

Founded in 2003

·More than 47 million tyres a year

·Founded in equal parts by Bridgestone, Continental, Goodyear, Michelin and Pirelli

🇳🇱

Netherlands

RecyBEM

Besluit beheer autobanden

·~8 million tyres a year, collected free of charge for the garage

·25 certified collection companies

·32 million kilos of rubber and steel recovered

What almost nobody points out about these systems: all four run on registration and traceability. RecyBEM has «registration of received old tyres» as a core function; SIGNUS and Ecopneus operate national tracking systems; Aliapur audits its collectors. The evidence layer is not an add-on to these systems — it is the machinery they run on. That is exactly what Latin America lacks, and the only thing ELTrack does.

The rest of the world

North America, Asia-Pacific and Africa

This closes the library: Latin America country by country, Europe by the numbers, and here the three continents that were missing.

North America

🇺🇸

United States

No federal law · 48 states with their own

·79% of end-of-life tyres reached end-use markets in 2023 (USTMA, 16th report, Oct 2024)

·Minnesota was first, in 1985. Today 48 of 50 states legislate — Alaska and Delaware do not

·Ground rubber is the second market: 28% of ELTs, up 29% since 2019

·Most states require licensing of haulers and processors, and a manifest per shipment

🇨🇦

Canada

No federal programme · province by province

·All 10 provinces and Yukon run programmes, all members of CATRA

·Tire Stewardship BC started in 1991: Canada’s first and among the world’s oldest

·Ontario runs EPR under its resource recovery authority (RPRA)

·The stated goal is diverting 100% from landfill

Asia-Pacific

🇮🇳

India

Mandatory EPR since 21 July 2022

·Hazardous waste rules, Schedule IX added by the 2022 amendment

·Mandatory registration on the CPCB portal for producers, recyclers and retreaders

·Annual targets per producer, met by buying EPR certificates from authorised recyclers

·Up to five years’ imprisonment for false information or for issuing certificates more than 5% above what was actually recycled

🇯🇵

Japan

Voluntary industry system · JATMA

·904,000 tonnes recovered in 2021, a 92% recycling rate

·In 2020 the rate reached 97%

·It runs with no legal obligation: the industry sustains it

🇰🇷

South Korea

EPR since 2000

·The system assigns a recycling quota to manufacturers, importers and sellers

·One of Asia’s earliest EPR schemes and a model for the region

🇦🇺

Australia

Voluntary scheme authorised by the ACCC

·56 million equivalent passenger units reach end of life every year

·77% recovered in 2022-23

·Tyre Stewardship Australia has levied importers and retailers since 2013

🇨🇳

China

No specific legislation found

·~330 million waste tyres a year, more than 10 million tonnes (2019)

·There is policy encouraging recycling, retreading and crumb rubber, but we found no dedicated law

·The world’s largest volume and the least defined framework

Africa

🇿🇦

South Africa

EPR Regulations · R.1184, 5 November 2020

·Published under the National Environmental Management: Waste Act

·Before it there was REDISA (2012), which levied manufacturers and importers per kilo and ran the national network — it was dissolved

·Today the Waste Bureau operates, with registered micro-collectors lifting tyres from landfills and illegal dumps

·The Industry Waste Tyre Management Plan was published in 2024

Across the rest of Africa and much of Southeast Asia we found no dedicated national tyre regime. We say «we found none», not «there is none»: the first is verifiable.

None of these systems resembles another in how it is funded: some are producer responsibility, others a state levy, one purely voluntary. Yet all of them converge on a single piece. The United States requires a manifest per shipment. India built a certificate market and attached five years’ imprisonment to inflating it. The Netherlands registers the tyre on receipt. Three continents, three funding models, one conclusion: somebody has to be able to prove where the tyre went.

SDGs · 2030 Agenda

Sustainable Development Goals: what we align to

The Sustainable Development Goals get quoted often and measured rarely. We do not measure environmental impact: we measure evidence. These are the four targets where an ELTrack figure is directly useful to whoever actually has to report.

3.3 · 3.9Good health and well-being

Combat vector-borne diseases and reduce deaths from air pollution.

A tyre left in the open collects water and becomes a mosquito breeding site; burned in the open it releases dioxins and particulate matter. Both start in the same place: a dump nobody recorded.

The figure ELTrack produces

Illegal dumps reported, and how many of them were cleared.

11.6Sustainable cities and communities

Reduce the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities, paying special attention to municipal waste management.

End-of-life tyres are special-handling waste and managing them lands on the municipality. Today most cannot say how many tyres circulate in their territory, let alone where they end up.

The figure ELTrack produces

Tonnes managed per municipality, with a folio and a receipt from whoever took them.

12.5 · 12.6Responsible consumption and production

Substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, recycling and reuse, and encourage companies to integrate sustainability information into their reporting.

A company can report that it recovered its waste. What it can almost never do is prove it with a document that survives an audit.

The figure ELTrack produces

A certificate per shipment: origin, weight, destination and the processor’s receipt.

17.17Partnerships for the goals

Encourage effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships.

No single actor solves the tyre problem. It takes the municipality that collects, the private operator that processes, the authorised carrier and the citizen who says where the problem is.

The figure ELTrack produces

Actors connected in the network, and citizen reports turned into collections.

Guides by profile

Start with who you are

Every player arrives with different questions. These are the ones we are asked most, grouped by profile.

Public sector

I am a municipality

How many tonnes does my municipality generate a year? How do I document where they went? What will they ask for if I am audited? How do I find reliable processors nearby? What do I do about an illegal dump?

Private sector

I am a processor

How do I get a steady supply of tyres? How do I prove compliance to a municipality? What is crumb rubber worth today? How much idle capacity do I have and how do I fill it?

Producers

I am a manufacturer or importer

Am I required to have a management plan? How do I join a collective one? What do I report and how often? What happens if I do not?

Large generators

I am a generator: fleet, industry or mine

I generate more than 10 tonnes a year — am I a large generator? Who takes my OTR tyres? Should I be given a final-disposal certificate? What does it cost?

Social Sector

I am a citizen

Where do I drop off four old tyres? Who do I report a dump to? Is it free? What harm do they actually do? How long does a tyre take to break down?

Investors

I want to build a plant

What permits do I need? What does the machinery cost? What do I produce: chip, crumb or powder? Who buys it? How long until it pays for itself?

Glossary

The sector's vocabulary, no waffle

NFUEnd-of-life tyre. The tyre that has finished its service life and can no longer roll.

TDFTyre Derived Fuel. Tyre chip burned as alternative fuel in cement kilns, paper mills and steelworks.

TDATyre Derived Aggregate. Chip used as a civil-engineering aggregate: lightweight fill, drainage, embankments.

Crumb rubberParticles from 0.5 to 4 mm. Used in sports flooring, artificial turf infill, asphalt mixes and moulded parts.

Micronised rubberFine powder graded by mesh. The finer it is, the more it is worth: modified asphalt, coatings, paints, adhesives and shoe soles.

Large generatorAnyone producing 10 tonnes or more of waste a year. They must draw up and, where applicable, register a management plan.

Management planEnvironmental policy instrument defining how a waste stream is handled across its life cycle. It can be individual or collective.

Collection centreFacility where tyres are gathered before being moved on for processing.

Energy recoveryUsing the tyre's calorific value as fuel instead of burying it.

Co-processingUsing the tyre simultaneously as fuel and as raw material in a cement kiln.

UMAUnit of Measure and Update. The reference Mexican law uses to express fines and obligations.

TraceabilityA record of the origin, movement, processing and destination of every tonne, with evidence at each step.

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