Golden Bay Cement, a subsidiary of Fletcher Building, is now reusing waste tyres to manufacture cement.293 Tyres are burned at a high temperature to replace coal for process heat, and remaining rubber and metal components are combined into cement.
This will divert up to 3 million tyres from landfill annually, which would represent around 60% of New Zealand’s total waste tyres.294 At full capacity, the plant will reduce annual carbon emissions by 13,000 tonnes and reduce total landfill waste by around 1%.295
The total cost of the project was $25 million, of which $16 million was funded by a grant from the Ministry for the Environment’s Waste Minimisation Fund.296