The executive director of the non-profit that issued a controversial tire recycling contract for the Saskatchewan Ministry of the Environment says it invited a second processor because other businesses expressed interest in the provincial market.Shercom Industries of Saskatoon had an exclusive contract to recycle Saskatchewan tires until Tire Stewardship of Saskatchewan issued a request for proposal in 2021 for a southern processor.The Western Standard asked TSS Executive Director Stevyn Arnt why the company issued an RFP for only the south."Well, we had multiple expressions of interest from other processors that wanted to get into the Saskatchewan market, coupled with our desire to handle more tires, and address legacy tires in the province, and to do that we needed to free up funds to do more. And that would accomplish both," Arnt said."You've also got to look at what the outcome is on the other side as well, because it's got a better environmental impact. And you can do it for the same or lower rates for consumers, in the province."Arnt said TSS was "moving to a payment on outbound material, reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, incentivizing value added processing, and better levels of inventory control.""We reached a point in negotiations where you got into 2020 2021, four or five years later, and really not making any progress in terms of implementing any of those recommendations."The RFP for a southern processor, issued in 2021, said the TSS "is looking to increase value-added processing in the province with new products and/or new markets and wants to minimize overlap with the offerings of the existing processor in the province."Shercom felt the language of the RFP suggested a submission was not wanted from them for the south and they did not want to continue as only the northern processor. The result is a California company processes tires in Moose Jaw instead of a Saskatoon-based one doing one there."It's not ideal. We'd like to have two functional processors," Arnt said.An RFP closed in January to process northern tires but a winner has not been announced. Arnt said part of the reason for opening the market up was the environmental impact of the post-processed tires."What CRM does is [for] rubber modified asphalt. And that has a much better environmental footprint, because of what that delivers, than what we've traditionally seen out of the previous processor," Arnt said, referring to Shercom.Arnt pointed to the agency's 2022 annual report, which said that Shercom had received 56.9 million pounds of tires, and 44.1 million was shredded."Seventy-five percentt of that was just simply shred tire, which has very little environmental benefit," Arnt said."Shercom also has some great products that they manufacture, which also had a positive benefit to the environment. But that . . . was the result about 20% of what they actually produced on a year-end basis." .Richards told Western Standard by email Arn't misinterpreted the data."There is a fundamental difference between simply shredding a tire then shipping it out of province and creating tire-derived aggregate," Richards said, adding the latter is a specified and recognized end product.Richards also said Arnt was "100% completely false" that the new arrangement with CRM was an improvement."Bottom line is currently for the past year, the tires in Saskatchewan have been destroyed and shipped out of province or as you can see stockpiled in Moose Jaw," Richard said.Shercom, meanwhile, still manufactures flagstone, rubber nugget mulch, rubber surfacing for treadmills, signature tile, splash pads, garage mats, and other products but now has to import the rubber from out of province.Richard also countered Arnt's comment about rubber modified asphalt being the best for the environment."Rubber modified asphalt is simply adding 10% or less of fine rubber crumb dust into a bitumen mix that is then mixed with standard traditional asphalt. The greenhouse gas emissions alone to manufacture asphalt and the bitumen that is needed to be paired with the rubber crumb has a much higher greenhouse gas and carbon footprint, than simple polyurethane binders," Richard explained."This paired with the amount of energy needed to manufacture the rubber crumb to the size required for RMA makes RMA the highest carbon footprint product that can be made from recycling tires."The Ministry of the Environment received two letters from industry experts saying the Saskatchewan tire market was so small it should only have one recycler.Arnt said the TSS did its own business analysis and also had a 22-page report made by Edmonton-based IntegriServ. An information request for the document by Shercom was entirely redacted."I'm not responsible for what the ministry chooses to redact," Arnt said."Obviously that confidential nature of the material or the rates that are outlined in that, they didn't want to make that public."Arnt also refuted accusations that Kevin Doherty, the former Sask Party Finance Minister who later lobbied for CRM had anything to do with the contract."I'll just go on record and say, Kevin Doherty didn't even engage us in a conversation on the southern-based processor RFP. There was no discussion that took place."
