TÜRKÇİMENTO announced that the industry has prevented the emission of 865 thousand tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by evaluating approximately 1 million tons of expired tires as an alternative fuel in the last 5 years.
TÜRKÇİMENTO, the umbrella association of the cement industry, emphasized that end-of-life tires are used as an alternative fuel in cement production within the framework of efforts for sustainable environment. While the cement industry used 90 thousand tons of expired tires as an alternative fuel in 2016, this amount increased to 283 thousand tons in 2020. Thus, the sector evaluated 901 thousand tons of tires as fuel in 5 years. On June 5, World Environment Day, TÜRKÇİMENTO CEO Volkan Bozay said in a statement on the subject: “As the cement industry, we use end-of-life tires (ÖTL) as an alternative fuel instead of fossil fuel, thus reducing greenhouse gases. In the last 5 years, we have prevented the emission of 865 thousand tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere with the use of end-of-life tires.”
Bozay stated that 67% of the tires used were imported from abroad as trimmed, since a sufficient amount of end-of-life tires could not be obtained from domestic sources, and that it is important to increase the use of alternative domestic sources in this regard.
Volkan Bozay stated that he carries out all the works of the sector in cement production within the scope of permissions and licenses obtained from the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization, and made the following assessment: “As the cement industry, which transforms industrial and domestic wastes that meet certain criteria into value as alternative raw materials or alternative fuels, we are the professional solution partner in waste management of our country. Certain wastes with energy value can be used as an alternative to fuels such as coal and petroleum coke that provide energy to cement factories, especially tires that have expired. We will also share the results of our work on the potential of environmental and economic benefits to be provided by the use of different wastes in the coming days.”