TDP Catalog

Section 2 Market Snapshot

This section provides a snapshot of California waste tire markets in 2012 and high-level trends as of spring 2013. More detailed segment-specific trend information is provided in Section 3.

2012 Diversion Rate Table 1 lists the number of passenger tire equivalents 1 flowing to each market segment and the percentage of the total passenger tire equivalents managed, for 2010 through 2012. As in the previous year, the overall waste tire diversion rate (e.g., diverted from the landfill) increased significantly, from 87.8 percent in 2011 to 92.7 percent in 2012, marking the first year that CalRecycle’s long-standing 90 percent goal has been achieved. However, some stakeholders focus on a more refined recycling rate that excludes waste tire exports (but not used tire exports), alternative daily cover and tire-derived fuel, which CalRecycle is statutorily prohibited from promoting. Excluding these segments, the 2012 diversion rate would have been 43.3 percent. Regardless of one’s view on how to measure recycling or diversion, tire disposal in California hit another all-time low in 2012, with 3.3 million passenger tire equivalents landfilled, representing 7.3 percent of all tires.

Table 1 Estimated End-Uses for California Generated Waste Tires, 2010– 2012 2

Percent change 2011- 2012

2010

2011

2012

Category

Sub-Category

Million PTE

Percent of Total

Million PTE

Percent of Total

Million PTE

Percent of Total

Waste Tires

6.4

15.5%

9.6

23.4%

13.5

29.9%

40.8%

Export

Used Tires (Exported)

1.8

4.3%

1.8

4.3%

1.8

4.1%

3.4%

Subtotal

8.1

19.8%

11.3

27.7%

15.3

34.0%

35.0%

Retread

3.6

8.8%

4.1

10.0%

4.0

8.9%

-2.0%

Reuse

Used Tires (Domestic)

2.0

4.9%

2.8

6.9%

3.3

7.4%

18.6%

Subtotal

5.6 5.0

13.7% 12.2%

6.9 4.9

16.9% 11.9%

7.3 4.4

16.3%

6.4% -9.6%

RAC & Other Paving

9.8%

Ground Rubber

Turf & Athletic Fields

1.4

3.3%

1.7

4.2%

2.2

4.8%

27.1%

Pour-in-Place Playground Loose-Fill Play/Bark/Mulch

0.1

0.4%

0.1

0.4%

0.0

0.1%

-68.6%

1.1

2.7%

1.1

2.6%

1.8

3.9%

66.8%

Molded & Extruded

0.7

1.7%

0.9

2.2%

1.3

2.9%

44.8%

Other

0.2

0.4%

0.1

0.3%

0.1

0.1%

-49.2%

Subtotal

8.6 1.8

20.8%

8.8 0.6

21.6%

9.8 0.6

21.7%

10.8% -1.2%

Civil

Landfill Applications

4.4%

1.4%

1.3%

1 PTE stands for passenger tire equivalents, which is defined by the State of California to equal 20 pounds. Data for 2010 and 2011 are from the “California Waste Tire Market Report: 2011.” 2 Numbers may not sum to subtotals or totals exactly due to rounding.

Contractor’s Report to CalRecycle

8