The tyre scandal
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 12 June 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Every year the UK produces around 50 million tyres for disposal. They are supposed to be sent for recycling. Instead, big money is being made by diverting tyres to illegal and dangerous 'pyrolysis' plants where they are melted down to extract oil and steel. Together with a team of journalists from Source Material, a not-for-profit group specialising in climate and corruption, we follow the tyres from the UK to India using tracking devices. The team discovers just how large scale this largely illicit business has become. Earlier this year, a makeshift pyrolysis plant exploded near Mumbai, killing four people. It had been processing tyres from abroad. Reporter Paul Kenyon confronts a tyre trader in the north of England who admits to shipping his waste tyres to India for pyrolysis.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Paul Kenyon, and I'm investigating what happens to our vehicle tyres when we throw them away. You'd be forgiven for assuming they're all recycled. After all, we pay a small levy in the UK to make that happen, but it's not always the case. So I'm going to take you on a pretty wild journey into a little known black market that feeds of our tire waste causing huge environmental damage and even death. |
| 0:34.7 | Most of us in the UK have a car and most of us at some stage need to get our tyres changed. |
| 0:43.3 | I'm here. Let's see if Eddie's around. |
| 0:50.9 | Eddie, how are you? How are you? Very good to see you |
| 0:55.1 | I need my tyres changed |
| 0:57.1 | Yeah sure sure |
| 0:58.5 | Let's check it up |
| 1:00.0 | Okay just have a quick look |
| 1:02.8 | What do you make of them |
| 1:03.3 | I think this one's a bit worn |
| 1:05.1 | Isn't it? |
| 1:05.6 | Yeah this one |
| 1:06.8 | Yeah |
| 1:07.6 | Okay |
| 1:08.3 | Let me have to look at the other one |
| 1:09.9 | Because always best to change too Yeah I think we need two new tires. |
| 1:17.2 | Okay, I need the bill. We're just in the back office at the moment. Eddie's just preparing the bill. |
| 1:24.1 | This is the total price. That's the tire price and then that's an environmental disposal fee. |
| 1:30.9 | Three pounds per tire, you see that's six pounds. I'm afraid you've got to pay because we dispose the |
| 1:36.2 | tyre. |
| 1:38.6 | That three pounds, or around four US dollars, is a fee we all pay for someone to pick up our tire waste and dispose of |
| 1:46.6 | it responsibly. But we can reveal the awful truth behind our export of tire pollution to the |
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