Even in Sardinia, the discomfort and discontent of tyre dealers and car repairers is growing due to the failure to collect PFU, or end-of-life tyres, which now occupy company yards, "a haven for rodents and insects and, if not properly disposed of or recycled, can cause very serious damage to the environment".
The complaint comes from Confartigianato , which also underlines the "significant economic damage to tire replacement and maintenance activities which can be subject to administrative and criminal sanctions for exceeding the quantities permitted in temporary storage."
"Wheel replacement and maintenance companies," says Giacomo Meloni, President of Confartigianato Imprese Sardegna, "find themselves literally overwhelmed by waste materials and, among other things, risk heavy fines from regulatory authorities."
"This is an explosive situation that has been going on for several months, if not years, and is creating intolerable inconveniences. We have repeatedly reported this," Meloni continues. " Although companies regularly pay the necessary disposal fee on new tire purchases, used tires are collected too frequently to fully process the accumulated waste that companies would like to see removed promptly. Used tires are classified as special waste and, as such, require appropriate treatment."
For this reason, Confartigianato wrote to the Ministry of the Environment, sending a letter to Luca Proietti, Director General of Circular Economy and Remediation, to highlight the situation facing auto repair companies dealing with the collection of end-of-life tires.
In the letter to the Ministry, the Association urges the Ministry to "activate a new additional target for ELT collection, as a priority measure of immediate support to alleviate the operational difficulties of our businesses."
This intervention, however, must be "accompanied by structural measures, including legislative ones, aimed at streamlining the entire tire management and collection system, with a view to transparency, traceability, and legality that will ensure its economic sustainability."
Among the solutions suggested by Confartigianato are the implementation of the National Register of Tyre Manufacturers and Importers established by the Ministry, with a specific portal function, dedicated to car repairers for receiving requests for PFU collection from workshops and automatic sorting to the Consortia.
mandatory.
Furthermore, «a centralised management of the PFU collection service would be necessary through the already existing institutional channel, i.e. the Register, a solution that the Artisan Organisation believes to be the most correct and transparent solution for a
effective regulation and optimization of the mechanism, to the benefit not only of auto repairers, but of all the actors in the supply chain."
Finally, tire dealers and artisan auto repairers are calling for the competent supervisory authorities to intensify and focus their monitoring of tire flows upstream in the supply chain, with a particular focus on online sales. This is "to intercept illicit flows and combat illegal areas in the market, root out tax and environmental tax evasion, and recover resources for the benefit of the economy, the environment, and the entire community."
Finally, the problem of end-of-life tires being illegally resold online or disposed of without paying the tax is a phenomenon that, nationwide, is worth €100 million a year and hundreds of thousands of contaminated sites. The data comes from the ELT Observatory, established in 2016 to monitor a sector that in Italy represents excellence despite its flaws and scams.
According to the report "Illegal Flows of Tires and ELTs in Italy," it is estimated that between 30,000 and 40,000 tons of tires are illegally released into the domestic market each year. This results in a failure to pay the environmental contribution for collection and recycling of approximately 50 million euros, an estimated VAT evasion of approximately 80 million, and a risk of end-of-life tires being dumped in the environment, resulting from illegal activities that do not exist and are therefore outside the rules of the national system.
