With 45 million used tires processed every year in the UK alone, keeping track of what is being done with the tires is of great interest to all parties, from consumers to the companies themselves, with uses including sports fields, running tracks, playgrounds, construction and more. 
 
Formed in 2004, the Tyre Recovery Association (TRA), which represents the UK’s tire recovery sector, tracks these tires. Flexible RFID -based sensors may provide the key to improving the processing of these tires.
 
“RFID tracking could clearly help us achieve even higher levels of compliance and best practice, particularly a product area such as tires where literally hundreds of new tire brands exist in the marketplace at any one time,” TRA Secretary General Peter Taylor said. “For us, the obvious ‘pinch point’ is where old tires are removed from wheels either in retailer premises or vehicle dismantlers’ yards. RFID tracking potentially offers a ready means not just of effectively keeping tabs on all these products, but of offering the possibility of more efficient tracking, auditing and valorization of a valuable resource which in the UK amounts to over 45 million tires each year.”
 
Taylor said that a cornerstone of the TRA is its support for the Tyre Industry Federation’s Responsible Recycler Scheme. Since 2006, the EU Landfill Directive has required that nations re-use or recycle virtually 100% of its end-of-life tire (ELTs) arisings.
 
“All TRA members are fully accredited by the scheme, which guarantees that all tires collected, recycled or reprocessed by them are disposed of or reused in an environmentally friendly or acceptable way,” Taylor noted, adding that almost 80% of all the UK’s ELTs flow through the hands of TRAmember companies. “This is an obligation that we as a nation are proud to have consistently met over the years. ELTs, unlike some wastes, are a valuable resource with numerous potential applications.” 
 
With an eye on digitalizing the process, the TRA recently completed a trial program utilizing RFID to track the tires to their ultimate use, for example,  reprocessing or retreading. The TRA partnered with TRA member Fraser Evans & Sons Ltd. and PragmatIC, which supplied the RFID tags that were attached to the tires.
 
“We believe that the use of low-cost flexible sensors has great potential applicability to large item wastes such as tires,” he observed. “We do face issues of non-compliance and poor practice, as do most other waste streams, and this is something that both we and our regulators wish to effectively address. Transparency, traceability and accountability are cornerstones of the scheme. Better waste tracking is clearly the way forward, and in the case of our own sector, PragmatIC’s RFID technology would seem to offer real potential.” 
 
“This low-cost tagging is a viable technology which enables the long-term digital tracking of individual end of life tires,” said Alastair Hanlon, chief commercial officer, Prag-matIC, when the trial was completed.
 
Together with PragmatIC, the TRA has successfully already trialed a small pilot evaluation of this RFID approach. “We are now looking to expand this to something on a larger scale, perhaps in cooperation with some of our regulatory bodies,” Taylor said.

Some challenges had to be overcome.
 
“We encountered a few specific challenges in the pilot project other than the small additional time needed to scan the sensor to each tire as it was collected. However, we anticipate that this will be greatly outweighed by greater efficiency in the downstream handling and monitoring of end of life tires,” Taylor added.
 
“As recyclers and reprocessors, the RFID approach has the potential to introduce much greater efficiencies into our member’s operations as well as to more robustly underpin essential best practice,” Taylor concluded. “At the same time, we very much hope that this potential will attract the support of our regulators for whom the more effective tracking of all waste arisings is a clearly stated policy objective.”