Waste tyre rules in India: how EPR makes tyre makers pay

Every company that puts new tyres on the Indian market is now responsible for having the same weight of waste tyres recycled, two years later. The obligation comes from extended producer responsibility (EPR) rules that the environment ministry added to the Hazardous and Other Wastes (Management and Transboundary Movement) Rules in July 2022, through G.S.R. 593(E) dated 21 July 2022, as a new Schedule IX. Tyre makers and importers meet it by buying EPR certificates from recyclers registered with the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), which runs an online portal for the whole system. Four years in, the targets have reached their full level, and the CPCB has been issuing show cause notices to companies that have not kept up.

Who has to pay

The rules define a “producer” broadly. According to the CPCB, it covers anyone who:

• makes and sells new tyres in India,
• sells new tyres made by someone else under its own brand,
• sells imported new tyres,
• imports vehicles fitted with new tyres,
• is a car or vehicle maker importing new tyres for vehicles sold in India, or
• imports waste tyres.

Producers, recyclers and retreaders must all register on the CPCB portal, and the CPCB says no entity may carry on this business without registering. Tyres that a producer exports are not counted towards its obligation.

How the targets work

Each producer’s obligation is set by the weight of new tyres it made or imported two years earlier, phased in over three years:

Year	Recycling obligation
2022-23	35% of new tyres made or imported in 2020-21
2023-24	70% of those in 2021-22
2024-25	100% of those in 2022-23
From 2025-26	100% of those two years earlier

Units set up after 1 April 2022 start two years later on the same basis. Importers of waste tyres must cover 100% of what they imported the previous year, and importing waste tyres to make pyrolysis oil or char is banned.

What recyclers produce, and how credits are counted

Registered recyclers turn waste tyres into reclaimed rubber, crumb rubber, crumb rubber modified bitumen, recovered carbon black, or pyrolysis oil and char. They earn EPR credit according to how much end product they sell, multiplied by a conversion factor for that product, set by the CPCB, and a weighting.

The weightings differ by product. Reclaimed rubber carries 1.3, recovered carbon black 1.25, crumb rubber modified bitumen 1.1 and crumb rubber 1.0, while pyrolysis oil and char carry 0.8 from continuous plants and 0.5 from batch plants. The CPCB’s own example: a recycler that sells 10 tonnes of crumb rubber earns credit for 13.33 tonnes.

Certificates stay valid for two years after the end of the financial year in which they were created. A retreader’s certificate defers a producer’s obligation for the matching quantity by a year, but the obligation ends only when the tyre is finally disposed of through a registered recycler.

Where things stand

In February 2024 the CPCB directed producers to meet their obligations for 2022-23 and 2023-24 by buying certificates. At that point, Business Standard reported, 52 manufacturers and 126 importers were in the producer category, 355 recyclers had applied, and 130 producers and 164 recyclers had been approved.

The CPCB portal now lists a further amendment to the rules in 2024, guidelines on environmental compensation for those who fall short, and an extension to 30 September 2026 for filing annual and quarterly returns for 2025-26. It also lists show cause notices, under the Environment (Protection) Act, to producers for not meeting their obligations for 2022-23, and to producers and recyclers for not filing annual returns for 2022-23 to 2024-25.

What it means for you

When you replace tyres, ask the shop what happens to the old ones; under these rules, waste tyre recyclers must be registered with the CPCB. If you are offered part-worn or retreaded tyres instead of new ones, our guides to tyre age and tread depth explain what to check, and our warranty guide explains why retreaded tyres fall outside makers’ warranties.