Velorim Sets Up UK Bike Tire Recycling Service

New legislation making it illegal to scrap bike tires is set to come into place at the end of the year in the UK. Velorim has set out to help retailers and riders in disposing of their unwanted rubber.

Velorim, is the cycle trade’s  National Bicycle Tyre Recycling Scheme for recycling and processing bicycle rubber. Under the newly launched initiative, shops, workshops, rental and refurbishment centers have the opportunity to become local collection centers.

To help get the scheme out to more shops in the UK, Velorim recently signed a deal with  Madison, a UK distributor of bicycle parts and accessories.  Under the deal, Madison’s retailers will have a channel to remove all of their rubber waste.  Madison is calling on its customers and local bike shops across the UK and Ireland to sign up with Velorim in order to tackle this “incredibly wasteful aspect of the cycle industry”.
Retailers need to sign up to the program and set up a collection area and collection receptacle (crate, bin, reusable plastic bag) for worn bike tires and inner tubes. The collection/recycling fee is 50p per tire and 20p per inner tube.  Under Madison’s program, the fee is waived for consumers buying new tires or tubes.

When retailers sign up to the scheme, they can also request free-of-charge leaflet holders, A5 leaflets, a dump bin, Eco-banner and A4 Strut Card to help promote the scheme to consumers.

Velorim will then collect the waste tires and inner tubes and process them into new materials or reuse them in other ways. This means nothing will go to landfill or be exported to other countries.
Currently, an overwhelming majority, (44,000 tons) of the 30,500,000 used tires and 152,500,000 tubes generated in the UK head to landfill each year.

Since 2018, Velorim has been researching recycling methodologies to find the most appropriate for bicycle tires and inner tubes.  In the process, Velorim bicycle tires are shredded and granulated to separate the materials into their rubber, steel and fiber components. Each of these materials are separated and used for different purposes. Velorim said this could be for construction, safety flooring or insulation. The most useful output from the process is the rubber.  This is reprocessed by Velorim into viable new raw materials such as Velo-Butylene™ and Velo-SBR™, both of which can be used to manufacture new products.

Velorim currently does charge for their pickup service which will cost each collection center £90 per tire cage collection, £16.50 per tire bag collection and £20 per tube box collection.

Also earlier this year, bicycle tube manufacturer, Schwalbe UK launched its own inner tube recycling scheme where it will be recycling the old tubes to create new ones.

© Scrap Tire News, December 2020