Tire Recycling Program

The California Tire Recycling Act requires that waste tires be disposed of properly.  You cannot dispose of tires in your regular refuse bin or your recycling bin.  Los Angeles Sanitation (LASAN) manages the following waste tire recycling programs that provide an environmentally preferable opportunity for the City to recycle used/waste tires:

Tires ImageRESIDENTIAL USED/WASTE TIRE CLEAN-UP

This program includes the collection and removal of used/waste tires within the City's residential areas where illegal dumping has occurred.

 

USED/WASTE TIRE AMNESTY EVENTS

This program involves specific amnesty events for City residents to drop off their used/waste tires at convenient locations free of charge for recycling. These events include the annual open houses at LASAN’s solid resources collection district yards.

 

USED/WASTE TIRE RESIDENTIAL DROP OFF

This program allows City residents to drop off up to four tires at any of LASAN’s solid resources collection district yards during the calendar year for recycling.

 
LASAN 2019 OPEN HOUSE TIRE RECYCLING COLLECTION EVENTS



OTHER LASAN PROGRAM WITH A TIRE COLLECTION COMPONENT:  

 

  • South LA Alley Clean-up Program
  • Clean Streets Los Angeles

 

To “close-the-loop” on the life cycle of the tires, the City has executed a service agreement with a CalRecycle-approved tire recycling company. Under this service agreement, the contractor is responsible for transporting all used/waste tires collected from LASAN district yards and other City locations to various state-approved waste tire processing facilities for recycling and beneficial reuse.

 

As part of the service agreement, the tire recycling vendor collaborates with the City in finding innovative technologies and environmentally preferable applications for used/waste tire management. The vendor is committed to building a sustainable market infrastructure for tire-derived products for their end use in accordance with the City’s hierarchy of options in order to close-the-recycling-loop and to diminish landfilling and incineration of tires.

 

Approximately 650 tons of waste tires are collected annually citywide from the above programs and of this amount, LASAN estimates 50%, or 26,000 tires are collected from the City’s residential right-of-ways. With the City’s hierarchy of options, the contractor shall divert the following percentages of used/waste tire materials being collected for end use to the following local markets:

 

  • 20-30% shall be retread for resale
  • 60-80% shall be distributed to the recyclers for crumb rubber production and use as a feedstock for slurry seal, artificial turf, ground cover for playgrounds, surface materials for running tracks and fields, etc.
  • 10-20% shall be used as a tire-derived fuel (TDF)
  • 5-10% landfill