Above (from left): State Sen. Missy Irvin, R-Mountain View, and State Sen. John Payton, R-Wilburn
Arkansas lawmakers are taking steps to improve the state’s troubled waste tire recycling program, targeting its financial instability and environmental risks.
State Senators John Payton of Wilburn and Missy Irvin of Mountain View are leading the effort with an interim study proposal unanimously approved late last week by a legislative committee.
The study aims to address rising costs for transporting and processing used tires, which have strained the program’s funding.
Read the complete story from the Arkansas Advocate’s Tess Vrbin:
Robyn Reed (left), director of Northwest Arkansas’ Boston Mountain Regional Solid Waste Management District, approaches a legislative panel on Friday, December 13, 2024 to propose changes to the state’s tire recycling program. Sen. John Payton (right), R-Wilburn, proposed raising the fees funding the program in 2023 but met resistance from other elected officials. (Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate)
Arkansas lawmakers consider suggestions to improve underfunded scrap tire recycling program
By Tess Vrbin, Arkansas Advocate
Businesspeople in the scrap tire industry shared their frustrations with Arkansas’ underfunded tire recycling program and suggested some improvements Friday before a legislative panel.
Scrap tires began to pile up in Arkansas when the recycling fund ran out of money in 2022. Despite the program’s shortfall, the governor and General Assembly have been unwilling to raise the state-mandated tire fees that support it. Those revenues haven’t kept pace with rising costs to transport and process old tires.
The state’s used tire program has faced challenges for years, and it received an overhaul in 2017 when a state law created a rim removal fee to fund the Tire Accountability Program. Customers pay a $3 fee for the removal of used tires or $1 if the tire is replaced by a used tire.
The fund, managed by the Department of Energy and Environment, is “living hand to mouth, so to speak,” said Sen. John Payton, R-Wilburn.
Payton sponsored a proposed fee increase in 2023 that did not become law. He and Sen. Missy Irvin, R-Mountain View, responded with an interim study proposal for the Joint Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee to brainstorm ways to keep the program’s funding consistent.
The proposal fueled Friday’s discussion between the committee and its guest speakers, including John Dillon, a regional vice president for Liberty Tire Recycling, which operates nationwide and uses local haulers to collect tires in Arkansas.
A problem with Arkansas’ waste tire fee structure is that it is expected to fully fund the tire recycling program, while other states use it as a supplement, Dillon said.
The disposal of scrap tires is complicated. They can’t be thrown into landfills because they decompose too slowly, hold water and attract pests. There also has not traditionally been a huge market for the recycled metal and rubber in tires
A 2023 legislative audit found that after administrative costs, $2.31 per tire returns to one of four used tire districts, which then reimburses recycling facilities for processing the material. However, each of the districts said processing costs them between $2.80 and $2.90 per tire.
Robyn Reed, director of Northwest Arkansas’ Boston Mountain Regional Solid Waste Management District, reminded the committee of this cost discrepancy. Her suggestions for bringing more money into the recycling fund were to keep the $3 tire removal fee as it is, apply it to new vehicles sold at dealerships and implement an across-the-board $30 fee for extra-large tires. There is currently no set standard fee for extra-large tires, which can cost hundreds of dollars to transport and process, Reed said.
Tire collection centers throughout the state are run on a volunteer basis, which is unsustainable, said Paige Davis, fractional chief financial officer for Little Rock-based playground equipment Davis Rubber Company.
“There’s no incentive for someone to keep up with them, to count the tires, to make sure the amount of tires that someone is putting on a manifest [list] is actually the amount of tires going into that trailer,” Davis said. “On top of that, we have actually gotten larger trailers, 53-foot box trailers, and if you don’t stack those tires correctly, you’re not going to get as many tires on them… and you have to go back and forth, and there’s going to be a lag in the system.”
Reed asked the Legislature to implement permits at the collection centers, which she said would improve the collection of tire manifests and ensure proper reimbursements.
She also said removing the $1 used tire replacement fee would “provide additional relief to those who buy used tires.”
Payton said there should be incentives to “get all the miles out of the tires that we can” before disposing of them.
“When we put a tax on the used tires and require permitting of people that carry them… it became a lot easier to go ahead and shred the tire with 20% of its life left,” he said. “That’s something that we don’t want to discourage because ultimately the more miles we get out of every tire, the fewer waste tires we’re going to process in the end. For many years, we just landfilled those tires, and now we require that they be processed, and it’s a little more expensive.”
‘Tomorrow’s dollars’
Payton’s proposal to raise the tire fees passed the Senate in 2023, but it stalled in the House where it met opposition from Republicans and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ administration, which viewed the fee increase as tantamount to raising taxes. A heavily amended bill without the increase ultimately became Act 713 of 2023.
The new law cut the number of tire districts from 11 to four, and the Department of Finance and Administration and Division of Environmental Quality committed to trimming administrative costs to try to free up program funding.
The finance department this year also began citing delinquent tire retailers for not remitting rim removal fees. At the outset, retailers owed about $4.3 million in unpaid scrap tire fees, but all of that amount isn’t collectable because some of those businesses are now defunct.
In the past, lawmakers have discussed two long-term fixes — raising and restructuring tire fees or dissolving the statewide tire recycling program and turning it over to the private market.
Local officials participating in the Tire Accountability Program have expressed concerns with privatization. Chiefly, they believe it would raise costs even more on consumers while making it harder to dispose of tires.
Davis said eliminating the program would disproportionately impact “mom and pop shops that sustain local economies in rural areas,” referring to small tire retailers.
Payton told the committee he hoped the input from Reed, Dillon and Davis would motivate lawmakers to effect change for the program.
“They’re looking at a purse that’s empty and hoping to get reimbursed,” Payton said. “That’s one of the things that we as state legislators need to take seriously, when we have people with their business on the line and we have a program that’s continually operating on tomorrow’s dollars instead of yesterday’s.”
The committee accepted the interim study proposal without objection.
Irvin, the committee’s Senate chair, said she expects the discussion to generate legislation in 2025. She said she is especially concerned about keeping tires out of landfills, such as the one in Cotton Plant in Woodruff County.
“If that thing caught on fire, you could see it from space… and that’s a significant environmental impact,” Irvin said.
The Arkansas Advocate is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to tough, fair daily reporting and investigative journalism that holds public officials accountable and focuses on the relationship between the lives of Arkansans and public policy.
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