City workers and volunteers working together to move dumped tyres towards the garbage trucks for the Philly Spring Cleanup at Tacony Creek Park in Philadelphia. Photos: Tyger Williams/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS
Wherever used tyres are dumped by a waterway or piled high in urban dead-ends, look for Jon Merryman; he’ll be there.
Merryman, 62, drove 115 miles (185km) on a recent Saturday from his home near Baltimore to Tacony Creek Park in the Crescentville section of Philadelphia, the United States to participate in a major tyre cleanup sponsored by the city and several non-profits.
The disposal and recycling of used tyres is a worldwide conundrum, and for Merryman, who is retired from Lockheed Martin, cleaning them up has become a bit of an obsession. He has visited over 2,000 counties in pursuit of them.
“I’d say I personally have handled about 10,000 tyres,” he said.
It’s a mind-boggling number considering how daunting the 2,200 tyres dumped near Tacony Creek looked that day. The pile was even larger when it was first discovered last year, a whopping 4,000-plus tyres. It was still as high as 6ft (1.8m) Saturday, snaking around like a dark, rubber river for about 100ft (30.5m) before a crew of 200-plus volunteers, like Merryman, donned gloves and got to work.
“We’re gonna form a line, like a human chain,” one volunteer shouted on the steep, muddy terrain.
One by one, volunteers dug into the tyre dump, sloshing stagnant water all over their pants and rolling the tyres up a hill toward idling city sanitation trucks. Squirrels and chipmunks scattered out from underneath.
Dumping the tyres, cleanup leaders said, was far easier than the cleanup.
“It feels good to get dirty for a good cause,” said volunteer Desiree Riley, of the non-profit Mastermind Cooperative. “It shows we can be an army for good.”
While Philly and other cities have been plagued with tyre dumping for as long as there have been cars, non-profits said the dump at Tacony Creek was the largest they had ever seen here.
Dumping the tyres, cleanup leaders said, was far easier than the cleanup. The dump is downhill from a stone access road for Septa rail lines, which was gated and locked. Officials say the culprits actually replaced the lock with one of their own, drove to a high point, and simply dumped them from the back of a truck.
Shari Hersh, of the non-profit Trash Academy, is disappointed the city did not catch the dumpers via camera systems. Officials believe a contractor likely opted to dump the tyres illegally, rather than pay fees at a proper recycling or disposal facility.
“This is a business and it’s a huge exploitation. They made repeated trips here,” Hersh said. “The cameras did not prevent this.”
The city has installed more than 300 cameras in an effort to combat illegal dumping of tyres and construction debris, with plans to add 100 more. Justin DiBerardinis, executive director of the non-profit Tookany/Tacony-Frankford (TTF) Watershed Partnership, said he would like to see some more clandestine “trail-cam” cameras, often used by hunters, which can be attached to trees and camouflaged.
Workers and volunteers tossing tyres that were dumped at Tacony Creek Park into a garbage truck.
By 9.30am, two human chains had formed, with hundreds of tyres rolling along. Sometimes, a few slipped away.
“Tyre rolling,” one man yelled.
Some industrious volunteers, like Merryman, got a workout in, hoofing the tyres uphill by hand to the sanitation trucks.
“I won’t have to go cycling today,” said Bob Weinhold, whose daughter, Bailey Weinhold, helped organise the event for United by Blue, an outdoor brand.
Each sanitation truck could hold anywhere from 300 to 500 tyres, a worker said. The tyres would likely be heading to a waste processor in Conshohocken or the Covanta trash incinerator in Chester.
“It costs a lot of money and takes a lot of man-hours to do this, and there’s costs to getting rid of them, too,” said Maria Horowitz, a watershed manager for the Philadelphia Water Department.
Councilmember Anthony Phillips, who was on scene, said the city spent US$48mil (RM216mil) a year on cleanups, with the bulk of the money used for removal, not prevention.
The US generates approximately 292 million “end-of-life tyres” annually, with New Jersey having a higher number than most states. Tyres can be recycled into asphalt or playground and sports equipment, and a tiny percentage have been used in alternative homes, like “Earthships”.
Unused tyres often pile up in urban areas.
These unused tyres often pile up in urban areas, posing a risk of fire that can release toxic smoke. A tyre fire closed I-95 (highway) in Philadelphia in 1996. The tyres can slowly leach chemicals into waterways as well and are notorious mosquito breeding sites.
Shredded tyres have even been a fuel source, burned at high temperatures to produce power at cement plants, pulp and paper mills, and other facilities. The Environmental Protection Agency said that’s preferable to stockpiling them.
“It is better to recover the energy from a tyre rather than landfill it,” the agency wrote.
By 10.30am, a cheer rose up from the wet, muddy crowd as all the tyres had been moved up the hill and sat, piled up, waiting for another truck. The crowds fanned out, but Merryman walked over to Snake Road, also in Tacony Creek Park, and found more tyres.
“There’s always more tyres,” he said. – The Philadelphia Inquirer/Tribune News Service
