Your old tyres go into the back of the van, and about half the time, the customer watching asks the same question before we have finished the paperwork.
It usually happens on a driveway somewhere on the Southside of Glasgow. The wheel is off, the old tyre has been broken off the rim on the van’s machine, the new one is fitted and balanced, and the scrapped casing gets stacked in the back with the others. Then the question comes. Where does that actually go?
Most fitters answer “it gets recycled” and leave it there. That phrase is doing a lot of work, and the honest answer is more interesting. Some of it is genuinely turned into new material. Some of it is burned as fuel. A large share of it leaves the country altogether, and almost nobody in this trade says so out loud.
This page gives you the full journey, including the part of it that is uncomfortable.
The Short Answer: Where Your Old Tyres Actually Go
Old tyres are collected by a licensed waste carrier, sorted, then re-used, retreaded, shredded into rubber crumb, burned as fuel in cement kilns or exported. About 14 per cent is re-used or retreaded, 17 per cent becomes crumb, 6 per cent goes to UK cement kilns and 63 per cent is exported. None goes to landfill.
Those four routes cover essentially everything. The word “recycled” gets used as a blanket over all of them, which is why the split matters more than the slogan. So here it is in one place:
| Route | Share | What it means |
| Re-use and retreading | About 14 per cent | Sound casings sold on or given a new tread |
| Rubber crumb | About 17 per cent | Shredded and granulated into new raw material |
| UK cement kilns | About 6 per cent | Burned as tyre derived fuel in cement production |
| Export | About 63 per cent | Shipped abroad, principally for cement kiln incineration or pyrolysis |
The rest of this page walks through how a casing gets from your driveway into one of those four columns.
Why Nothing Goes to Landfill Any More
The heap in a field is the image most people carry, and it is out of date by more than two decades. Whole tyres were banned from UK landfill from 2003, and shredded tyres followed in 2006. The landfill share today is zero.
The reason is scale. The UK generates roughly 55 million used tyres a year. We feel a tiny corner of that number ourselves. A single four-tyre change on a sole trader’s van puts four casings in the back at once, and that is one vehicle, on one street, on one morning. Multiply that across the country every day and you understand why burying the problem stopped being an option.
A tyre also refuses to stay buried. Whole casings trap air, work their way upward through landfill and damage the caps engineers put over closed sites. The ban was practical long before it was fashionable, and it is the reason every casing now has to go somewhere useful, or at least somewhere accounted for.
The Journey Step by Step, From Your Driveway to the End Product
Here is what actually happens next, in order. Once the casing is handed to a licensed carrier it enters the national recovery chain, and from that point the process is the same whether the tyre came off a car in Glasgow or a van in Kent. The stages below are how the industry takes a tyre apart, because a tyre is not one material. It is three: rubber, steel and textile.
Step one, the van and the depot
The casing rides back to base in the fitting van with the rest of the day’s scrap. From there, we hand casings to a licensed waste carrier. That licence is a legal requirement for anyone carrying waste tyres commercially, and in Scotland the registration sits with SEPA. It is the first checkpoint in the chain, and the one your fitter is personally responsible for.
Step two, sorting
At the processor, casings are sorted by condition and type. A sound car or van casing with legal tread and no structural damage can be re-used or retreaded, which is where the about 14 per cent re-use figure comes from. Retreading matters most for truck tyres, where a strong casing can carry several new treads over its life.
Damaged, worn or aged casings go the other way, into processing. Once a casing is on that path, it will never be a tyre again. It becomes raw material.
Step three, PAS 108 baling and sidewall cutting
Some sound casings are compressed into bales built to a standard called PAS 108. A bale is exactly what it sounds like: around a hundred tyres squeezed into a dense rectangular block, used in civil engineering for things like embankments and drainage structures. Larger casings heading for processing have their sidewalls cut off first, because the sidewall and the tread behave differently in the machines.
Step four, primary shredding
The first shredder reduces a whole casing to chips of 50 to 100mm. Picture rough rubber pieces somewhere between a matchbox and a phone in size, with steel wire still bristling out of them. This is the point where a tyre stops looking like a tyre.
Step five, magnetic steel recovery
Every tyre contains steel, in the belts under the tread and the bead wire that grips the rim. Powerful magnets pull that steel out of the shredded stream, and it is sold as scrap steel back into steelmaking. One material out, two to go.
Step six, granulation to rubber crumb
Secondary shredding and granulation take the chips down to crumb of 0.5 to 4mm, about the size of coarse sand up to a grain of rice. This is rubber crumb, the raw material behind the roughly 17 per cent that becomes new product in the UK.
Step seven, textile separation
Air separation lifts the light textile fibre away from the heavier crumb. That fibre, the cords that gave the tyre its shape, is the third and final material stream after rubber and steel. At this point the tyre has been fully unmade.
What Your Old Tyres Become
The crumb, the steel and the fibre all go somewhere, and some of the destinations are places you walk past every week. The main end uses are:
- Artificial turf infill, the black granules on 3G pitches
- Rubber-modified asphalt for quieter, more flexible road surfaces
- Playground safety surfacing, the soft rubber floor under swings and climbing frames
- Equestrian arena surfaces
- Drainage and civil engineering fill, including PAS 108 bales
- Scrap steel recovered from the belts and bead wire
- Tyre derived fuel for cement kilns
- Pyrolysis feedstock, broken back into oil, gas and carbon
If you have ever watched a kid come off a climbing frame and bounce rather than break, there is a fair chance old tyres were underneath them. The same goes for the 3G pitch at the local five-a-sides. The material does not vanish. It changes jobs.
Worth being clear about the limits, though. These end uses are where UK crumb and bales go, not where every casing goes. The share that reaches them is the domestic slice of the split, which brings us to the number this page exists to publish.
The Number Nobody Else Publishes: 63 Per Cent Is Exported
On a late night roadside job, loading a casing in the dark, we have been asked it straight: “you’re not just going to dump that, are you”. A fair question deserves a fair answer, so here is the one number the rest of this industry’s blog pages leave out.
About 63 per cent of the UK’s recovered tyres are exported, principally for cement kiln incineration or pyrolysis. Not recycled into playground floors here at home. Shipped abroad, mostly to be used as fuel or broken down for their chemistry.
We publish that because you cannot claim to be answering this question honestly while hiding its biggest column. Export means the material leaves UK oversight. It is the least satisfying part of the whole answer, and it is the reason the domestic crumb figure matters as much as it does.
Our own part in the chain is the first link and only the first link. We hand casings to a licensed waste carrier. What we can promise is that every casing we collect enters that legal chain. What no fitter anywhere can honestly promise is which of the four routes a specific casing ends up taking, and you should be wary of any who claims otherwise.
What incineration in a cement kiln actually is
Tyre derived fuel is exactly what the name says. Whole or shredded tyres are fed into cement kilns as a substitute for coal, and about 6 per cent of the UK’s recovered tyres are used this way at home. Cement kilns run at such high temperatures that the tyre is consumed completely, and the steel in the casing is absorbed into the clinker, the intermediate product of cement, rather than being left behind as ash.
What pyrolysis actually is
Pyrolysis means heating the rubber in a sealed chamber with no oxygen, so it cannot burn. Instead the rubber breaks apart into oil, gas and a carbon residue, which are collected and used as industrial raw materials. Think of it as running the tyre’s chemistry backwards. Casings sent this route are counted as pyrolysis feedstock.
What This Means When a Fitter Takes Your Old Tyre
For you, standing in your driveway, the practical version is short. A legitimate fitter takes the casing away as part of the job and passes it to a registered waste carrier, because waste tyres are a controlled waste, coded 16 01 03 in the European Waste Catalogue, and handling them properly is a legal duty of care under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. With us, taking the old casing away sits inside the quoted total for mobile tyre fitting in Glasgow. It is not an added item, and it never appears as a surprise line at the end.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are old tyres actually recycled in the UK?
Partly, and the honest answer is a split rather than a yes. About 14 per cent is re-used or retreaded and about 17 per cent becomes rubber crumb for new products. About 6 per cent is burned as fuel in UK cement kilns, and about 63 per cent is exported.
Can old tyres still go to landfill in the UK?
No. Whole tyres were banned from UK landfill in 2003 and shredded tyres in 2006. The landfill share of tyre recovery today is zero, which makes tyres one of the more tightly controlled waste streams a household ever produces.
How many used tyres does the UK produce each year?
Roughly 55 million used tyres a year. That figure is why the recovery chain exists at the scale it does, and why anyone carrying scrap tyres commercially must be a registered waste carrier, registered with SEPA here in Scotland.
What is rubber crumb used for?
Rubber crumb, the 0.5 to 4mm granulate made from shredded tyres, becomes artificial turf infill on 3G pitches, playground safety surfacing, equestrian arena surfaces and rubber-modified asphalt. It is the most visible second life an old tyre gets.
Are UK tyres sent abroad?
Yes. About 63 per cent of the UK’s recovered tyres are exported, principally for cement kiln incineration or pyrolysis. Export is legal and documented, but the material leaves UK oversight at that point, which is why we state the figure rather than talk around it.
Do you take my old tyre away when you fit a new one in Glasgow?
Yes, always. Taking the old casing away is included in every fitted price we quote across Glasgow, along with fitting, balancing and a new valve or TPMS service kit. The casing then goes to a licensed waste carrier and enters the national recovery chain.
Getting a Tyre Fitted in Glasgow, Old Casing Included
Every fitted price we quote covers the tyre, removal and fitting, wheel balancing on the van’s on-board balancer, a new valve or TPMS service kit, torquing to manufacturer specification, and taking the old casing away into the licensed chain described above. If the tyre coming off is beyond repair, emergency tyre replacement works exactly the same way.
Call or WhatsApp 07955 533000 and you get one total on the call, before the van moves. We are 24/7 Mobile Tyre Services, family run for over 20 years, based at Polmadie on the Southside of Glasgow, fitting at your home, your work or the roadside 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Last reviewed: September 2026. The recovery percentages on this page are industry figures published by the British Tyre Manufacturers’ Association and move slightly year to year, so we check them annually.
