Nonmetallics

STARR TIRE PILE CLEANUP CONTINUES

Recycling Environmental Group and Carbon Services Corp. have received $1.3 million in grants from Pennsylvania to fund cleanup projects at the Starr Tire Pile, the state’s largest tire disposal pile, and to create markets for the 6 million-plus tires at the site in Greenwood Township, Columbia County.

Cleanup of the Starr Tire Pile began last year, when the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) began forcing companies and individuals who dumped tires at the site to begin removing them. The General Assembly appropriated $6.8 million in the 2004-05 budget to the DEP for the cleanup of scrap tires, including $2 million secured by the local state senator and representative specifically for work at the Starr Tire Pile. According to a release from the DEP, that funding is essential to its aggressive effort to clean up the site and to make responsible generators remove their tires, including the creation of the Starr Waste Tire Reuse Grant Program. The first two grants under this program have been awarded to Recycling Environmental Group and Carbon Services Corp.

The Recycling Environmental Group from Bloomsburg has received a $1 million grant for a 12-month project that will process about 1 million tires into 2- to 4-inch shreds.

Carbon Services Corp. of Lehighton received $300,000 to remove about 2,000 large, hard-to-dispose-of tires from the site. The tires, which are not suitable for conventional processing because each one can weigh more than half a ton, will be prepped in Philadelphia and deployed as a new reef habitat in the Atlantic Ocean.

Both projects are expected to create a combined 15 full-time jobs and generate economic development within Pennsylvania.

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is moving toward reestablishing its scrap tire program. The state’s Waste Tire Fee expired Jan. 1, 2004, but starting in October, retailers will begin collecting a 50-cent fee for every new tire purchased in Missouri.

The DNR estimates the scrap tire fee will generate about $2.1 million a year.

The new law includes a Missouri vendor preference that provides a competitive advantage to Missouri businesses that participate in tire site cleanups. The bill also gives the director of the Department of Natural Resources authority to use scrap tire funds for public health, environmental and safety projects in response to environmental emergencies such as tire fires.

"The department’s waste tire program was one of the top 10 in the nation," Doyle Childers, director of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, says. He adds that the DNR is "ecstatic" to see the renewal of the scrap tire fee and to be able to reestablish the scrap tire program.

The department will continue to use the money generated from the fee to clean up scrap tires from Missouri’s landscapes and countryside.

GREENMAN TO CLEAN UP IOWA SITE

GreenMan Technologies Inc., based in Lynnfield, Mass., has announced that the Iowa Department of Natural Resources has awarded GreenMan’s Iowa subsidiary a contract to clean up an additional 1 million scrap tires located at the Bee Rite Tire Disposal site in Rhodes, Iowa.

In April, GreenMan completed the first phase of the Bee Rite Tire Disposal site cleanup, which approximated 900,000 scrap tires. Mark Maust, GreenMan’s Midwest regional vice president, estimates the project will generate $950,000.