More than 42 million used tires dumped in the Kuwaiti desert have begun being recycled, as the Gulf nation tackles a waste problem that has created one of the world’s largest tire dumps.
The dump is just 7 km from a suburban neighborhood, causing significant disruption to residents due to massive fires emitting noxious black smoke.
But this month Kuwait, which wants to build 25,000 new homes on the site, has finished moving all the tires to a new site in al-Salmi, near the Saudi Arabian border, where recycling efforts have begun, Reuters reported, September 7, 2021.
At a plant run by recycling company EPSCO Global General Trading, employees sort and shred used tires before pressing the particles into tile-sized rubber.
“This plant helps the community by cleaning up discarded tires and turning them into consumer products,” said EPSCO partner and CEO Alaa Hassan, adding that they also export products to neighboring Gulf countries and Asia.
The EPSCO plant, which began operations in January 2021, can recycle up to 3 million used tires per year, the company said.
Al Khair Group transports more than half of the tires to the new site using up to 500 trucks per day and plans to open a plant to incinerate tires through a process called pyrolysis, said CEO Hammoud al-Marri.
Pyrolysis produces a type of oil that can be sold for use in industrial furnaces such as cement plants, and an ash known as carbon black that can be used in various industries.
Used tires are a major environmental problem worldwide because of their large size and the chemicals they can release.
Oil-rich Kuwait, an OPEC member with a population of about 4.5 million, had about 2.4 million vehicles in 2019, data from the Central Bureau of Statistics shows, up from 1.5 million in 2010.
The Kuwaiti government hopes al-Salmi will become a hub for used tire recycling, with more plants planned.
