Benoit Charette, Minister of the Environment and the Fight against Climate Change, recently announced an investment of $500,000 in a new program to support research and development of products derived from reuse and recycling of used tires in Quebec.
Qualifying projects must demonstrate that they help stimulate the end-of-life tire processing markets and foster the emergence of high economic value outlets. Organizations will be able to submit their proposals until December 2020 to RECYC-QUÉBEC, which coordinates the allocation of funds as manager of the Quebec Program for Integrated Management of Used Tires.
“Stimulating the market for the processing of our residual materials in a circular economy perspective is one of the priorities of our government. We aim to lay the foundations for an environment conducive to innovation and the optimal processing of a material that represents a significant tonnage,” said Charette. “We hope that the research and development sector, as well as the companies involved in the re-molding and recycling of end-of-life tires, can show innovation in this search for solutions.”
Currently, used tires from Quebec are used in the manufacture of speed bumps, recreational surfaces, mud flaps, agricultural carpets, etc. Blasting mats are also made with tires from the Quebec Program for Integrated Management of End-of-Life Tires. Tires are treated according to the 3RV hierarchy in the following proportions: one per cent remolded, 90 per cent recycled and nine per cent recovered.
In 2019, RECYC-QUÉBEC granted $1.8 million in financial assistance to increase the processing capacity of the Quebec used tire recycling industry.
“For the past four years, the quantity of tires processed in Quebec has grown steadily. It went from 71,000 tonnes in 2014 to almost 93,000 tonnes in 2018. This trend does not seem to be waning and we are happy to be able to count on these amounts. We can thus create a context conducive to innovation and optimal conditions for the sustainable treatment of this material,” said Sonia Gagné, president and CEO of RECYC-QUÉBEC.
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