Fixing the UK’s Waste Tyre Problem: Part 1

Part 1 of 3: Where Do Your Old Tyres Really Go?

Every year, around 50 million tyres reach the end of their life in the UK. They come off cars, vans and trucks in garages across the country and then, for the most part, they disappear into a system very few people understand. 

Where does each tyre actually end up? Who takes responsibility once it leaves the garage forecourt? And how can anyone be confident it’s being managed responsibly? 

The broken incentive 

When you get your tyres changed, you pay a small environmental disposal fee, typically a few pounds per tyre. That fee is supposed to fund responsible recycling. But here’s the problem: the driver pays, and the garage decides what happens next. 

Most garages aren’t acting out of malice. But when margins are tight, the cheapest disposal route wins. And the cheapest route doesn’t always mean the most responsible one. 

Where does waste tyre recycling actually happen? 

Right now, processed scrap tyres have two main destinations. The first is granulation - turning tyres into rubber granules for use in construction products like rubberised asphalt, sports surfaces and insulation. This is the most circular option available today, but UK electricity costs make domestic granule production uncompetitive. Processing abroad, primarily in countries with lower energy costs and strong demand for rubber granules, is currently the most economically viable route. 

The second destination is tyre-derived fuel, or TDF - where shredded tyres are burned in cement kilns. TDF permanently destroys the material and removes it from any future circular pathway. It’s the worst environmental option, and it’s also the biggest structural barrier to investment in advanced recycling technologies like pyrolysis. 

Then there’s a problem that gets far less attention: part-worn tyres. Some end-of-life tyres are put back on vehicles without any proper testing. Others are stockpiled in their thousands by operators trying to sell them on, creating serious fire risks and removing material from the recycling chain entirely. 

A system built on trust, not evidence 

The waste tyre sector has run on assumption for too long. A garage pays for disposal. A collector picks up the tyres. After that, the trail often goes cold. There are responsible operators doing excellent work, but without a standardised system for tracking what happens at every stage, it’s almost impossible to separate the good actors from the bad. 

This isn’t just an environmental issue. Tyre manufacturers and wholesalers increasingly need to demonstrate ESG compliance. Garages want to know they’re doing the right thing. And anyone investing in advanced recycling technology needs confidence that feedstock supply is traceable and reliable. 

The problem has never been a shortage of tyres. It’s been a shortage of infrastructure to manage them transparently. 

In part two, we’ll look at how Big Atom’s platform is built to solve this and what it means for every business in the tyre supply chain.