The legal campaign group, Fighting Dirty, have today announced that they’ve put the Environment Agency (EA) on notice of legal proceedings after sending a pre-action protocol letter. The move comes over the EA’s lack of action around addressing the environmental or health impacts of UK companies exporting car tyres – a waste stream that the EA still deems “green list waste”. This campaign will be entirely crowdfunded.
Under the current system, tyres are classified as ‘Green List’ waste, meaning they can be freely shipped to countries like India without proper checks or oversight. But many of these tyres are not being properly recycled. Instead, they are burned in unsafe conditions, poisoning communities, workers, and the environment with toxic fumes.
The move coincides with the BBC’s broadcast of BBC Radio 4’s File on 4 documentary that Fighting Dirty Director, Georgia Elliott-Smith contributed to. The documentary will show how a makeshift pyrolysis plant in India exploded killing four people while processing tyres from abroad, almost certainly Europe and the UK. The documentary will hear from a tyre trader in the north of England who admits to shipping his waste tyres to India for pyrolysis.
Commenting, Georgia Elliott-Smith said,
“This is a dirty open secret that the Environment Agency is very much in on. The EA already has evidence that illegal tyre dumping is happening, but they’ve done nothing. That’s why we’re stepping in—to demand change through the courts and make the government take responsibility. Our goal is to force the EA to either prohibit the export of these tyres entirely or reclassify them as ‘Amber List’ waste, requiring stricter controls and accountability.”
Footage from a pyrolysis plant is available for all to see online.
Fellow Director at Fighting Dirty, Steve Hyndside added,
“Until now, the environmental focus on car tyres has been on how they shed particulates, particularly microplastics. What we’re shining a light on today is the devastating unseen end of life for most of our tyres. Car tyres are made up of hundreds of toxic cocktail of chemicals and compounds that we know are then burnt in pyrolysis plants in India. I’ve seen the footage showing the black smoke pouring from the baking chamber, the workers, normally young men, wearing nothing but T-shirts and certainly without masks or other protective equipment. This is both an environmental crime and a grave human rights violation. Now is not the time to look away.”
Fighting Dirty’s Director, journalist George Monbiot, wrote about this issue in 2019. Commenting George Monbiot said,
“I’ve heard first-hand from those in the industry that this is an open secret. That every month we export thousands of tonnes of tyres taken from our cars. They end up in India where they’re burnt in pyrolysis plants, to make the dirtiest of industrial fuels imaginable. To do this they are pouring toxins into the air, as British and Indian officials look the other way. This process can produce a hideous mix of heavy metals, benzene, dioxins, furans and other persistent organic chemicals, some of which are highly carcinogenic. This simply can’t be allowed to carry on.”
Rowan Smith, environmental lawyer at Leigh Day, said: “Our client is currently of the view that the Environment Agency has misunderstood its legal powers, by assuming its enforcement oversight ends as soon as the tyre leaves UK shores. Fighting Dirty’s letter has alerted the Environment Agency to this legal error, and threatened legal action if it is not corrected.”