Each
year more than 40 million used tyres are removed from vehicles
in the UK.
If
all these tyres were placed end-to-end, the line could stretch
from London to Sydney, Australia and back again (approximately
21,000 miles) and there would still be spare tyres left over.
If
all the tyres available for disposal were put together, they would
weigh just over 285,000 tonnes – that is about the weight
of 38,000 male African elephants!
Virtually
100,000 car and van tyres reach the end of their useful life each
day – they all have to be collected and processed for disposal
on a daily basis.
120
car tyres to the tonne.
One
tonne of tyres takes up approximately 2 cubic metres of landfill
space. By 2006 Sapphire had processed 50 million tyres. That is
a saving of ¾ million cubic metres of landfill space.
