Starting this month a new environmental policy requires Brazilian industries and importers to collect and appropriately dispose of as many “unusable” automobile tires as they sell new. The measure reduces the previous proportion, which established five tires collected for every four manufactured, adopted 10 years ago and much criticized by industry leaders.

But now the companies will have to set up collection sites in all municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants and prove their compliance with the rules each year.

It is a “positive” change because it considers the sold tires and not the manufactured tires, of which “a quarter are exported and a quarter delivered to vehicle assembly lines,” Eugenio Deliberato, president of the National Tire Industry Association, which expects to collect 48 million used tires in 2009, told Tierramérica.

The unusable tires may be turned into industrial fuel, asphalt and other products.