This place is the world’s largest tyre graveyard with over 4 crore old vehicle tyres dumped in Kuwait’s sands and have started to get recycled. The place is a prime location for dumping old tyres and sulfonated rubber objects which has now exceeded its capacity to store and eventually will have to be recycled. Several projects are on the bid to recycle the tyres and make a viable use of them.
It’s The World’s Biggest Tyre Dumpsite
More than 42 million old vehicle tyres dumped in Kuwait’s sands have started to be recycled, as the Gulf state tackles a waste problem that created one of the world’s largest tyre graveyards. The massive dump site was a mere 7 km (4 miles) from a residential suburb. Residents were bothered by periodic large fires releasing noxious black smoke.
As there has been scarcity of space to live, Kuwait wants to build 25,000 new houses on the site, finished moving all the tyres to a new location at al-Salmi, near the Saudi border, where recycling efforts have begun.
Recycling Companies Set To Bid
At a plant run by the EPSCO Global General Trading recycling company, employees sort and shred scrap tyres, before pressing the particles into rubbery coloured flooring tiles. The EPSCO plant, which began operations in January 2021, can recycle up to 3 million tyres a year, the company said. Oil-rich Kuwait, an OPEC member with a population around 4.5 million, had about 2.4 million vehicles in 2019, Central Statistical Bureau data shows, up from 1.5 million in 2010.
“The factory is helping society by cleaning up the dumped old tyres and turning them into consumer products,” said EPSCO partner and CEO Alaa Hassan from EPSCO, adding they also export products to neighbouring Gulf countries and Asia.
Scrap tyres are a major environmental problem worldwide due to their bulk and the chemicals they can release. The major among them wpuld be carbon gases which can be released if its burnt and the only way to reuse such kind of non-biodegradable materials is to recycle in a productive manner and inhibit more productions of tyres across the world.
