Starting Sept. 1st 2009, the Ontario Tire Stewardship program comes into effect.  So what exactly does this mean to the average consumer?

It's quite a confusing amount of information, and unfortunately it's not really get off to a great start.  In simple terms, the program will work in this manner:  Tire manufacturers are to be charged a disposal tax when making a tire.  This tax will be used to pay for the disposal and recycling of tires.  In effect, they are being pre-charged for what retailers currently add on to your bill for "environmental disposal".  The idea here is that more people will be inclined to return or properly dispose of their tires, instead of leaving them at the dump, or in a field/barn/ditch somewhere.  I, for one, certainly hope this helps the matter.

We at Newmarket Tire have never charged for tire disposal, instead opting to pay the associated costs out of our profit - a "cost of doing business", if you will.  It would be akin to a coffee shop charging you to throw out (or recycle) your coffee cup for you.  Other business associated with tires, however, have been charging their clientelle for disposal, usually between $2 - $5, and usually gaining small profit doing so.  Basically it means the playing field has been levelled, and profiting from these charges eradicated.

I'm also hoping that the extra money collected for this pre-tax recycling gets used to properly recycle the vast quantities of scrap tires that have been left in dumps or barns.  The program states that in time, this will be the case.  Tires, after all, will never biodegrade on their own, and I've seen what happens when a thousand scrap tires stashed in a barn suddenly catches fire.  Not fun.  And quite smelly.

There's lots of reading material over at http://www.ontariots.ca for those looking for more information.