FREDERICTON, New Brunswick—For the second year in a row, Recycle NB, Canadian Tire and the Rubber Association of Canada are teaming up to offer free tire clinics across New Brunswick during Canada's Waste Reduction Week.
Between Oct. 21-26, motorists may go to any of the 19 Canadian Tire outlets in New Brunswick for a free tire check. If they register on the Recycle NB website, their names will be entered in a drawing to win four winter tires, the RAC said in its most recent newsletter.
While so far Recycle NB has partnered only with Canadian Tire in offering the free clinics, that doesn't necessarily rule out the participation of other New Brunswick tire dealerships in the future, according to a Recycle NB spokeswoman.
Goodyear has donated this year's set of snow tires for the drawing, the spokeswoman said.
Recycle NB is the organization that has overseen New Brunswick's scrap tire stewardship program for more than 15 years. The program is paid for by an advance disposal service fee of $3 on each new motorcycle or moped tire, $4.50 on each new passenger tire and $13.50 on each new medium truck tire.
Scrap tires are collected by tire retailers within the province and sent to the Tire Recycling Atlantic Canada Corp. facility in Minto, N.B., for transformation into value-added products, according to Recycle NB.
In 2011—the latest year for which figures are available—some 1,074,000 passenger tire equivalents were collected and recycled in New Brunswick, which amounts to a 98.7-percent recovery rate. This compared with 1,149,000 PTEs in 2010, or a 102.1-percent recovery rate.
Several factors were responsible for the fluctuation of PTEs collected and recovery rates between 2010 and 2011, according to Jamie Seamans, program manager for tires at Recycle NB. These include economic conditions affecting new tire sales, weather-related circumstances and the increased use of multiple tire sets, such as snow tires.