A recent Tyre Amnesty event undertaken jointly between Neath Port Talbot and the City & County of Swansea Councils has been hailed a huge success.
The success of the event can be attributed in no small way to the excellent input from the local Keep Wales Tidy Officer, Alan Powis.
Alan Shields, Tidy Towns Project Manager, Neath Port Talbot Council said “We are very grateful for the fantastic help from Mr Powis, without which, the event would not have been the great success that it was”.
The Tyre Amnesty was made possible by funding through the Welsh Assembly Government’s Tidy Towns Grant Scheme, a Local Environmental Quality Initiative.
This joint venture is unique as it is the first joint cross-boundary initiative of its kind in Wales and has resulted in over 1,440 tyres being recovered. All recovered tyres were later sent for recycling. The aim of the event was to focus joint efforts in assisting residents to dispose of their unwanted tyres.
The Leader of Neath Port Talbot Council, Cllr. Ali Thomas, said “The overall objective of the Tyre Amnesty was to go some way to eliminating the potential for future occurrences of fly tipped tyres that blight our everyday lives”.
He added “the Tidy Towns Grant Scheme has provided the Authority with the opportunity of providing a much needed community resource which otherwise would not have been possible”.
Richie Jones, Tyres Officer for Fly-tipping Action Wales said “Fly-tipped tyres are a huge problem across Wales and this was an excellent initiative by both Neath Port Talbot and Swansea Councils to combat this.
We see around 55,000 incidents of fly-tipping in Wales every year, with an annual clean-up cost to the taxpayer of around £3million”.
For more information on the efforts being carried out to tackle fly-tipping, visit: www.flytippingactionwales.org
