Glossary and Acronyms

Here's a Glossary and List of Acronyms as they appear throughout the Tyre Stewardship website.

Accreditation means recognition by Tyre Stewardship Australia (TSA) that a business or organisation has made a commitment to, and meets the requirements of, the scheme.

Accredited voluntary arrangement means a voluntary product stewardship arrangement accredited by the Australian Government under the voluntary product stewardship provisions of the Australian Government’s Product Stewardship Act 2011.

Action plan means the timeline and the steps that the applicant proposes to undertake to meet the commitments of the Category/ies nominated by the applicant. This includes how the applicant will promote participation in the scheme to businesses and other organisations.

AMIF means the Australian Motor Industry Federation.

Applicant means a business or organisation that is a legal entity with an ABN or ACN and has applied to become a Participant.

ATIC means Australian Tyre Industry Council.

Authorised signatory is an individual who is authorised to execute a binding document on behalf of a business or organisation.

Circular Economy means a systems solution framework that tackles global challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution. It is based on three principles, driven by design: eliminate waste and pollution, circulate products and materials (at their highest value), and regenerate nature. It is underpinned by a transition to renewable energy and materials. Transitioning to a circular economy entails decoupling economic activity from the consumption of finite resources. This represents a systemic shift that builds long-term resilience, generates business and economic opportunities, and provides environmental and societal benefits.

Collector means an individual, business or organisation that collects and/or transports end-of-life tyres in any part of Australia for recycling, reuse or disposal. For the purposes of the Scheme, a transporter is a collector.

Consumer means the final purchaser of a tyre. As the owner, a Consumer shares responsibility for the appropriate disposal of a tyre when it reaches its end of life.

Crumb rubber A highly-refined rubber product, typically less than 1mm in diameter, made from recycled tyres.

Direct incineration of tyres means the incineration of tyres for disposal and without effective energy recovery.

End-of-life tyre means a tyre that is deemed no longer capable of performing the function for which it was originally made.

End-of-life tyre (EOL tyre) means a tyre that is deemed no longer capable of performing the function for which it was originally made.

Environment Protection and Heritage Council (EPHC), See Standing Council on Environment and Water Environmentally sound use means the use of whole, part or recovered components of end-of-life tyres for applications that minimise or prevent environmental, health and safety damage or harm.

Environmentally sound use means the use of whole, part or recovered components of end-of-life for applications that minimise or prevent environmental, health and safety damage or harm.

Equivalent Passenger Unit (EPU) means a standardised measure for the quantity of tyres. One EPU contains as much rubber and other materials as a ‘typical’ passenger tyre. For the purposes of this scheme, the assumed weight of one new EPU is taken to be 9.5 kg and one end-of-life EPU is taken to be 8 kg. This table provides the list of EPU ratios for different types of tyres that apply for the purposes of reporting by tyre importers under the scheme and the list of ratios that apply for reporting by recyclers under the scheme.

Export means export from Australia.

FCAI means the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries.

Fleet operator is an entity that owns or operates a fleet of vehicles, including private and Australian and state and territory government fleet operators.

Gate fee, see Recycling gate fee.

Import means import into Australia, and includes bring into Australia.

Importer means an organisation who is responsible for the import of new tyres for use in Australia. This includes tyre manufacturers, tyre importers, vehicle importers, and mining tyre importers.

Landfill means waste disposal sites used for the authorised deposit of solid waste onto or into land.

Local government is a government entity with powers and geographical distribution established by a state or the Northern Territory. A ‘Local government’ can also be referred to as a local council, city, shire, town or municipality.

Miners mean businesses or organisations that are engaged in the exploration for, and extraction and primary processing of, minerals in Australia, including coal and petroleum. Primary processing is taken to include the processing of minerals up to the first pouring of refined metal but fabrication beyond that stage is excluded.

Non-motorised trailer means a trailer, vehicle, caravan or camper towed behind a motorised vehicle.

Off-the Road (ORT) tyre means tyres that;
-Are not fitted or attached to two-wheeled vehicles, passenger cars (including four wheel drive vehicles), trucks or other large on road vehicles during their use, irrespective of this use being on road or off road; and
-Are used on vehicles involved in heavy duty applications in industries such as mining, agriculture, aviation, manufacturing, construction and defence (but not limited to those industries); and
-Are of a size and/or weight that is incompatible with currently-active tyre recovery facilities and related operations (including transport, storage and/or processing steps) designed to recover passenger car and truck tyres, in the absence of prior additional or adapted handling or processing steps.

Participant means a business or organisation that has received accreditation from Tyre Stewardship Australia and made a commitment to meet the requirements of the scheme.

Parties to the scheme means the Australian Motor Industry Federation, Australian Tyre Industry Council, Australian Tyre Recyclers Association, and Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries which came together to develop the Guidelines and support the establishment of Tyre Stewardship Australia; and who have approved these Guidelines.

Processing mean manual, mechanical or thermal alteration of end-of-life tyres for the purpose of recycling or productive reutilisation of tyre material.

Product stewardship means a policy approach recognising that manufacturers, importers, retailers, governments and other persons have a shared responsibility for the environmental impacts of a product throughout its full life cycle. A product stewardship scheme establishes a means for relevant parties in the product chain to share responsibility for the products they produce, handle, purchase, use and discard.

Recovery means the process of extracting materials or energy from a waste stream through reuse, recycling or recovering energy from waste.

Recycle means a process to recover constituent materials from end-of-life tyres and use those materials to produce other products.

Recycler, see Tyre recycler.

Recycling fee means the money that is paid when end-of-life tyres change hands in the supply chain and covers the costs associated with activities such as handling, storage, transport and recycling. The Recycling fee includes the Recycling gate fee that is paid to tyre recyclers.

Recycling gate fee means the money paid to a tyre recycler to ensure the environmentally sound use of end-of-life tyres.

Retailer means a business or organisation that offers products for sale at retail through any means, including sales outlets, catalogues, or the Internet. For the purposes of the scheme, tyre retreader is a retailer.

Retreader means an entity that gives new tread to a tyre. For the purposes of the scheme, a tyre retreader is a Retailer.

Re-use means to use a collected tyre for the same or similar purpose as the original purpose without subjecting the tyre to a manufacturing process that would change its physical appearance.

Rubber granule means a refined rubber product, typically 2mm - 15mm, made from recycled tyres.

Scheme means the Tyre Product Stewardship scheme administered by TSA, being the arrangement between parties in the tyre supply chain to share responsibility for the long term management of end-of-life tyres in Australia, as set out in this document.

Standing Council on Environment and Water means the body comprising Ministers from the Australian Government, the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Victoria, Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia plus others. The Council considers matters of national significance on environment and water issues. It replaces the Environment Protection and Heritage Council.

Transporter, see Collector

Tyre means a vulcanised rubber product designed to be fitted to a wheel for use on, or already fitted to, motorised vehicles and non-motorised trailers towed behind motorised vehicles. For the purposes of these Guidelines, ‘tyre’ includes, but is not limited to, a tyre for motorcycles, passenger cars, box trailers, caravans, light commercial vehicles, trucks and truck trailers, buses, mining and earth moving vehicles, cranes, excavators, graders, farm machinery, and forklifts.

Tyre-derived fuel (TDF) is a fuel derived from end-of-life tyres and includes whole and shredded tyres used for this purpose.

Tyre-derived material (TDM) Any product produced from rubber, steel, textile or other material recovered from recycling end-of-life tyres. This was previously referred to as TDP. For TSA, TDM is the preferred terminology for this concept as TDP is already an established acronym in plastics recycling, referring to thermal depolymerization.

Tyre-derived product (TDP) see TDM.

Tyre importers and vehicle manufacturers and importers means businesses or organisations that are engaged in tyre importing, vehicle importing or vehicle manufacturing and are first to supply a tyre to the domestic Australian market.

Tyre Stewardship Australia (TSA) means the entity created to administer the tyre product stewardship scheme.

Tyre product stewardship scheme (the scheme) means the arrangement between parties in the tyre supply chain to share responsibility for the long term management of end-of-life tyres in Australia.

Tyre retailer means a business or organisation that offers tyres for retail sale through means such as traditional retail stores or online. A tyre retailer includes mobile tyre services, vehicle dealerships, mechanical repair businesses and fitment centres who sell retail tyres to customers.

Tyre recycler means a business or organisation recovering rubber, steel, textile and/or other materials and processing it into a form whereby it can be used as an intermediate product in the manufacture of tyre derived products, or to recover energy from end-of-life tyres.

Used tyre means a tyre that is deemed no longer capable of performing the function for which it was originally made.

Waste hierarchy means the key framework underpinning waste management policy and practice in Australia is the waste management hierarchy, which ranks the ways of dealing with waste in order of preferences. The waste management hierarchy ranks strategies in order of preference from avoiding the creation of waste as the most desired outcome, and disposal as the least desired outcome.