Truth & Tipping Fees

By Milton M. (Mike) Masson, P.E.

Editors Note: Mike Masson has been a Director of the Rubber Pavements Association since 1994. He has 38 years experience in engineering, marketing sales and government relations. He is a past President of the Arizona State Chamber of Commerce, was the Western Regional Campaign Chairman for President Reagan 1980-84, served on the Board of the US, Synthetic Fuels Agency and has been associated with National Society of Professional Engineers, American Consulting Engineers and the National Council of the Engineering Examiners. Prior to entering the crumb rubber production industry Mike was a principal in several prominent west coast engineering firms. He is currently President and CEO of PolyTek Rubber and Recycling Company which operates the nations largest crumb rubber production facility, PolyTek Southwest in Queen Creek, Az.

The past five years have seen a nationwide move to eliminate the practice of discarding scrap tires in waste landfills. As a result a large and ever growing percentage of the nation's scrap tires are being recycled in one form or another. So far so good - we seem to be moving in the right direction.

But wait - in the past session of the Arizona legislature, we took a major step backwards. Changes to the Arizona tire law now make it much easier to approve waste tire monofill's for the disposal of scrap tires. So easy in fact the USA Waste has informed us that they have already received approval and currently have a license to operate tire monofill's is at all of their Arizona landfill operations.

Why worry? Currently Maricopa County is under contract with PolyTek Southwest to take automobile scrap tires at a gross tipping fee of $69.00 per ton. When this contract expires we can expect the tipping fees to reduce to somewhere around $35.00 per ton assuming it will be acceptable to haul the scrap tires to a tire monofill as an approved means of disposal. Those who suggest that these tires will be in effect "in storage" for future use do not understand the crumb rubber manufacturing process. This simply is not true. Further, PolyTek currently can utilize 100% of the scrap tires from Maricopa County and still have a need for additional scrap tires to meet its production needs.

Why is all of this so important to any of us? Well, first as a tax payer I'd like to eventually see the end of tipping fees. This will never happen as long as they go into landfills. The transportation and landfill fees will never go away, this will always require a tipping fee for this means of disposal.

In this short term, the reduction in tipping fees that will surely result from the approval of landfill disposal will have an immediate and dramatic effect on the cost of crumb rubber.

The bottom line impact of a major reduction in tipping fees due to land filling of scrap tires will increase the final cost of crumb rubber by a minimum of 4 cents per pound and possibly more.

This is of obvious interest to our Rubber Asphalt Contractors who are constantly under pressure to find ways to reduce the cost of rubberized asphalt.

The only hope for the total elimination of tipping fees is the continued development of a reliable crumb rubber industry.

Eventually, as the demand for crumb rubber grows and there is a growing market for finer mesh product "which already brings higher prices" scrap tires will become a valuable raw material and tipping fees will disappear completely. Until then, we should encourage public officials to continue their current and past policy of requiring the recycling of all scrap tires in a beneficial manner, not landfilling.

We have come a long way - lets not take another step backwards.