Regulatory punctures stalling waste tyre management in India?

In recent years, pyrolysis has acquired a tainted reputation in India’s waste tyre recycling sector. Global media headlines have gone into overdrive about illegal pyrolysis units — units that burn whole waste tyres with no oversight or pollution control, to produce tyre derived fuel oil, and generate toxic pollutants in the process.

From sudden fires causing loss of life and property, to the thick plumes of harmful black smoke hanging over industrial cities, these units have drawn global criticism. Yet, not all pyrolysis units operate outside the law. India has a regulatory framework in place for pyrolysis — the process itself is not illegal. 

But the persistence of illegal operations has ignited scrutiny over the import of waste tyres into India. Many now argue that this trade is supplying feedstock to rogue pyrolysis plants and are calling for this trade to be banned.

Strikingly, some of the loudest calls for this tighter control over waste tyre imports to India come from the waste tyre recyclers in the exporting countries themselves, including, but not limited to, the United Kingdom. These recyclers urge to put a ban on importing whole waste tyres into the country and to only allow the import of shredded tyres instead. The argument is that doing so will prevent waste tyres from feeding the illegal pyrolysis units, since the pyrolysis units (legal or illegal) require whole tyres to operate, and cannot use shredded tyres.

While their point certainly has merit, market dynamics suggest that environmental concerns might not be the only factor at play, since in countries like the UK, recyclers are typically paid to recycle waste tyres, and if the same waste tyres are exported to India, the recyclers here, by contrast pay to receive them. By promoting the export of shredded tyres instead of whole tyres, recyclers in these exporting countries can continue to earn revenue for the initial processing, to keep their businesses viable — revenue that is currently getting lost with the tyres getting shipped out to India. 

India, for its part, had already taken steps in this direction. Since 2019, a ban on the import of waste tyres (whole or shredded) has been implemented, but only for the purpose of pyrolysis. In spite of that, illegal pyrolysis units continue to operate in the country.

Meanwhile, the import of waste tyres (whole or otherwise) for other recycling pathways, such as mechanically shredding rubber from tyres to recover it (crumb rubber) and devulcanising rubber (reclaim rubber) to make it flexible for re-introduction in new products, remains permitted in the  country.

It is quite clear that a tyre import ban for pyrolysis alone will not solve the conundrum of unauthorised pyrolysis, and is only a small part of a deeper issue. Understanding this requires looking beyond pyrolysis, at the regulatory landscape of the other tyre recycling process in the country. 

When waste tyres are imported into India, they are brought in under a code called the harmonised system of nomenclature (HSN), which is a globally used customs classification system meant to identify and track the nature of traded goods for taxation, regulation and data purposes.

Generally, each product type is supposed to have its own HSN code so that it can be monitored. In the case of imported waste tyres, however, the HSN code for all forms of waste tyres — whether it is whole tyres, shredded tyres or even fine crumbs of the tyres — is the same. 

This opens up a loophole that is easy to exploit and difficult to detect. Since crumbing is a purely mechanical process of reducing tyres into smaller particles and no change in chemical state of raw material, both the raw material (input) and the finished product (output) are recorded under the same HSN code, making them appear identical in official records.

Since there is no official way to verify whether the crumbing actually happened on the imported tyres, it has allegedly become a backdoor route for some crumb rubber operators to divert their legally imported whole tyres to unauthorised pyrolysis units for a quick profit, without leaving a paper trail.

The regulatory issues don’t end at import loopholes — they also extend to the current extended producer responsibility (EPR) framework for waste tyres. This EPR framework, which supposedly needs to be established for holding producers / importers of tyres responsible for the waste they generate, instead allows them to escape any real accountability.

Under the current framework, instead of mandating them to establish collection mechanisms for discarded tyres or ensure that the tyres are being sent to legitimate recyclers — these producers are allowed to fulfill their obligation by simply purchasing credits from any registered recycler.

This lack of mandated oversight has allegedly resulted in the slipping of a certain share of discarded tyres into the feed for illegal pyrolysis plants. The producers’ hands-off approach, encouraged by the EPR rules, has created a system where systematic collections of waste tyres aren’t the norm, where legal recycling cannot be assured, and where the very makers of this waste get away with mere compliance on paper.

Regulatory gaps have not only failed to curb the persistence of illegal pyrolysis units but have also not succeeded in making the legal units truly environmentally sound. The 2015 standard operating procedure (SOP), introduced by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to regulate legal pyrolysis, failed to curb the emissions from the units.

After repeated environmental concerns and an NGT case, a new SOP was issued in 2024 which was projected by the CPCB as a major technical upgrade from the existing “batch” pyrolysis process to a supposedly more “advanced batch automated pyrolysis”. This new technology claims to offer stricter fugitive emissions control and allows environmentally sound operations.

For context, pyrolysis in India is majorly done through a process called batch pyrolysis, in which whole waste tyres are heated in closed oxygen-free chambers in batches, so that the rubber breaks down into oil, black carbon residue, and iron scrap. The oil is used as an industrial fuel, while the carbon black and steel are recovered for reuse. Typically, this process releases toxic emissions, which must be controlled with pollution control devices. 

“The 2024 SOP appears to be more cosmetic in nature than substantive,” said Ishita Garg, programme manager, industrial pollution, Centre for Science and Environment. “Apart from minor technological tweaks — like elaborating on the various types of emission control systems and automation systems, both of which were anyway already mandated in the older 2015 SOP — the new SOP largely mirrors the previous 2015 version, but packaged under a new name.”

These so-called reforms raise doubts on the seriousness of the government in meaningfully addressing the environmental risks associated with the pyrolysis.