Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Representative Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: We're live. Good morning. Welcome to the environment committee. This morning, 09:00,

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: we can start two zero four. Testimony from Matt Chapin.

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: Thank you. My name is Matt Chapin. I'm the director of the waste management and prevention division, and with me today is Shannon Choquette. She is an environmental analyst that works with me in the solid waste program. And so today, we're going to sort of talk a little bit about scrap tire management and h two zero four, what's going on in the state, what what's in a tire, what's going on, and and sort of the some recommendations at the end of the day with respect to h two zero four. So with respect to the the first slide in the slide deck that I have provided, this is basically an overview of of what a tire is made up of. And I think it's just, you know, informative. You know, there's a lot of synthetic material in most passenger and light truck tires with, you know, some degree of rubber, but that gives you an idea of where things are. The next slide, which I think maybe is this shows you how much in the way of tires are generated in The United States, so and the percentage of of the market. So light duty tires make up 87, almost 88% of the market, with 72% of those being passenger tire replacements. So again, just to give you some context. I think the next slide is again for this committee probably what you start getting interested in, which is what happens at a tire with a tire at its end of life. And for the most part, you see that tires are there are a limited set of options available for what we do with tires at the end of their life. They range from grinding them and getting the rubber, turning them into tire derived fuel at various cement kilns or paper pulp facilities, land disposal, which is basically landfilling, and civil engineering uses. Let's see. Alright. Before we transition to the next slide, let me see if I can get into the the Zoom and put it up on the screen. I can go ahead and keep going if it's deciding to continue to load itself up. Great. Great. Great.

[Mark Rochford, Owner, Vermont Tire]: Turn that off. Alright, Adam.

[Representative Rob North]: That's the one.

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: There we go. So this shows over time what the percentage of the market at a national level where tires have been So again, a good what about 50% of them are going to tire derived fuel with other various uses, ground rubber uses and other uses taking place with respect to our tires. Okay. And and then this is what is basically happening with Vermont tires. So Vermont tires are either processed into drive tire driving fuels and used in paper mills in Maine or in large truck tires are processed into crumb rubber and sold to flooring manufacturers, molded rubber products, dairy cow mattresses, etcetera. I I am aware there are some other newer markets coming on. I've heard that some of there's increased use of tire products in Jersey barriers, alternate Jersey barriers, and that is one that is, is promising and a potential, reuse for tires that are are not an energy recovery use, which is not ideal, but it's it's better than landfilling.

[Mark Rochford, Owner, Vermont Tire]: Asphalt as

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: well. Asphalt is definitely an option. It has challenges in Vermont. In VTrans, it's not particularly keen on the use of tires and asphalt because of the it makes the pavement overly hard and brittle and difficult to both put down and also manage once put down. So this provides a little bit of context of how we've been dealing with tires in the state of Vermont. Not surprisingly, tires have been an issue for a long time, and act 78, which is sort of the foundational solid waste law in 1987 banned all waste tires from landfill disposal in 1992. Basically, we're estimating based off EPA's numbers that that Vermont is generating one tire per person per year or about 645,000 scrap tires each year are generated in Vermont. We believe that 95% of them, based on what the industry is saying, are legitimately managed. Basically, most states rank tires at the top of their difficult to manage waste materials, and Vermont is one of 14 states that don't have a scrap tire management program, sort of an official program that deals with the management of scrap tires. So why should we be concerned about scrap tires?

[Mark Rochford, Owner, Vermont Tire]: I will say I have a

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: lot of experience with the first two bullets as my former job as the head of legal services in in the department before being, and we have a fair amount of illegal hauling and illegal dumping and specifically illegal hauling. One of the largest concerns that that or one of the concerns that we have is that legitimate tire retailers, service stations are using illegitimate haulers and managers. And we've seen it happen where tires are taken from someone who thinks they're doing the right thing and disposed of basically and abandoned in a place where they're not appropriately managed. So I'm happy to talk more about various cases. Several of them have been litigated and are truly challenges to deal with, but that's certainly out there. Illegal dumping is a problem. It's an issue. It's kind of less of an issue than we've seen in some other jurisdictions. Certainly, still have legacy issues associated with salvage yards and their failure to properly manage tires at the salvage yard. From a from a just sort of environmental perspective, scrap tires are are great breeding grounds for mosquitoes and bacteria, and specifically as as weather gets warmer and more mosquito borne diseases are present in Vermont, it becomes a bigger and bigger issue. There are potential for fires. There have been cases in Southern New England and New York where fire fires have gone on for days and are basically difficult to impossible to put out once they start. And lastly, they're just a general source of pollution. So in in 2013, we did a report on tire management. And as a part of that report, we had 62 surveys of problem tire sites, files with greater than 100 tires, and there were about 62 of them that were submitted. This basically estimates that we have a 450,000 ish tire scrap problem in the state, roughly estimates that our cleanup costs at that time were around a million dollars, $900,000. We estimate that that amount increased over the past fourteen years.

[Representative Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Is that per year?

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: Is so correct me if I'm wrong, that was a one time legacy cost to deal with historic tire piles. So, you know, there's so in that 2013 report, there certainly were some conversations around whether the state should be taking a more active role using funds collected by the state to manage these tire piles. I think one of the concerns the state has always had with respect to this is perverse incentive that is created when the state comes in and removes someone's tires and don't take the ownership or responsibility over them. So if you're a salvage yard and your competitor is basically going and paying for the disposal and removal of all of these tires, and we come in to your yours and remove them all for you at no cost, that that both we're worried that that sets up a situation that in the future, someone's going to expect the same activity to take place and we just have another dire pile there as soon as we take dire pile one away. And then also, we wanna make sure that that that individual is responsible, whether it be by putting a lien on the property or or other, way of addressing the the tire pile. I don't know. Has the committee had a walkthrough of the bill yet by Michael Grady? Great. I'm not try and do any sort of detailed walkthrough with respect to it, But I will note a few things going through it that, as far as recommendations. And I think they're they're relatively minor from my standpoint. One is, I think it's important to make clear that the stewardship organization is required to use certified haulers to manage their tires. And if they're storing or doing some sort of temporary stockpiling in the state, that they use certified solid waste facilities so that they're they're using the permitted system. In that way, we have some regulatory oversight of the the actors in the system. Representative Pritchard. So do we have certified haulers?

[Representative Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: We do. We

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: do. You know, the the the challenge we have is we also have uncertified haulers that are hauling tires as well, and those are the ones that we have had issues and challenges with historically. Yeah.

[Representative Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: The the only reason I asked Matt is because I was in this business for a while. Oh, were you okay? You know, on work for car dealerships. So we, you know, we we would have a fee that was on the tire when it was sold, so we could dispose of it. Didn't have to worry about it. It eliminated people, you know, when they were taken off, didn't have to pay for them. It was already taken care of. We would pile them, and and we would have we would have three or 400 tires in the back of the dealership. And every month, we had some folks from Poisson, Mass called Bob's Tire. I don't know if they're a certified hauler or not. Yes, they are. So they would come and they took care of all the dealerships in rural and we thought they were doing the right thing, they were taking it off. So that's why I asked, because there were those tires all at the premises. We would get occasionally people that would come at night, pick through them to find a tire that might still be good in their eyes and stuff, but it seemed to us to we had a slip, we had the name of who took them,

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: how many they took? Well, that's basically what we would like to see happen. And I think that in I would like to say the majority of cases, I think that's what does happen. But we certainly have some fairly high profile bad actors that are holding themselves out as being reputable tire haulers, and then they're entering into agreements with Vermont property owners to use their facility for storage and then just walking away away from those chire files. And when we bring in enforcement action, they declare bankruptcy and walk away from their obligations to do any cleanups. So, I think from from our standpoint, trying to create a system where everyone knows who the regulated actors are and they have a legal obligation to use those regulated actors is important regardless of what ends up happening at the end of the day with the EPR proposal.

[Representative Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: So you would envision, Mike I mean, that that the tie the folks at the disposed tires would have to use this certified list if they are hauled away? Yes. Okay. Yes.

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: So the second sort of proposed modification that we have is there's a new manufacturer registration requirement that's in the bill. It was kinda it's kind of an oddity, and it may be a function of just sort of when this bill was drafted because I know it started with representative Dean and has been updated sort of through the years. My recommendation is to take that new manufacturer registration process and move it into being a function of the stewardship organization. For the most part, all those registrations ultimately get handled by the stewardship organization. They post those things online, and that seems like the right place to have the registration. And then

[Representative Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: Excuse me.

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: Sorry to interrupt.

[Representative Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: So just to just to understand this language, the person who manufactures the tire would then also be responsible for the disposal of it?

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: So this is like most extended producer responsibility programs. So it would require tire manufacturers to form a stewardship organization. That stewardship organization would be responsible for end of life management of tires, and then that would be required to basically that stewardship organization would be required to work with tire retailers, auto dealers, other people who basically do tire service or are otherwise collectors under the the law, and they would get picked up free of free of cost at the time of of disposal. Thank you. You're welcome. And then sort of the last recommended changes is that all of these effective dates get pushed back a few years in time. So you'll notice throughout the bill it has a requirement that the plan be submitted by July '26 and that the program become effective by July '28. I mean, just because or I think it's actually '27. Because of all of the other work that's taking place at the agency right now, especially with HHW EPR, having two significant EPR programs coming into place at the same time doesn't make sense. So trying to stagger the dates in a way so that staff time can be freed up to effectively implement and manage this program is sort of my recommendation and ask for the

[Representative Rob North]: competitive. Representative North. Thank thank you, mister chair. Matt, thanks for the presentation. So you said that Vermont is one of only 14 states without a a waste management program. So what other states have them? Do they any of them have EPR full of EPR systems like we're talking about here with PRO? And are any in New England?

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: So I will say I know that the state of Connecticut has an EPR program that they are in the process of standing up right now. I think it is the first entire EPR program in The United States. And And I'm going to turn it over to Shannon to talk about what the other programs look like.

[Shannon Choquette, Environmental Analyst (VT ANR) — Solid Waste Program]: Yeah. So other states, it may be typical that when you purchase a tire, there's a fee on the sale of a tire or when you register your vehicle, there's a fee at that time. Those fees are typically remitted to like a state's all waste tire fund to employ people to oversee funds that might go out to counties for quarterly amnesty days. It may fund specifically just cleanups of illegal tire piles, but specific, but specifically, I mean, usually what it would involve is, you know, a lot of state employees just basically overseeing cleanups that occur. Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, a lot of Southern states have it. And really, I mean, a good majority, not a good majority, but as you could see, Vermont was only one of 14 that doesn't have any scrap tire program. But that's not to say that, you know, feedback from these other states, it still is a difficult to manage material, even with these programs that they have funded for years and years, they still have legal tire hauling, dumping, and the funds typically clean up the remnants of that.

[Representative Rob North]: So, to follow-up, how well are those working? I mean, do those states that have waste tire piles are tire piles?

[Shannon Choquette, Environmental Analyst (VT ANR) — Solid Waste Program]: Yes. Absolutely not. Yeah, I think feedback from other states is that these tire piles are still continuous. They still are actively working. For example, in Georgia, they have a robust team that just cleans up piles and oversees that grant funding to clean up piles all throughout the state. I've never heard feedback that they expect these programs to end at any point, like they've been successful enough to actually not have to receive these funds for cleanups. I mean, in comparison, North Carolina, do fund not necessarily just cleanups, but the tire amnesty days for each county as well. And so they can be used in both ways, the preventative free collection and then the cleanup.

[Representative Rob North]: How well is the Connecticut DPR working?

[Shannon Choquette, Environmental Analyst (VT ANR) — Solid Waste Program]: Thus far, within their bill, there was not language that required retailers Well, that allowed well, it allows retailers to opt in, but does not require retailers to opt in. So the retail community in Connecticut thus far hasn't opted in to be collection sites. And Connecticut doesn't have as robust transfer stations throughout their communities that collect waste tires. And so because of that, they're estimating that their tire EPR may collect upwards of 20 to 25 of scrap tires from Connecticut residents. So the retailers are really what might be a key to success in Connecticut. But then again, they also, like I mentioned, do not, like my mother where she lives does not have a transfer station in her community that she has access to, like

[Representative Rob North]: most Vermonters do here. Does the Connecticut system have a retention value on tires to incentivize people to bring them home?

[Shannon Choquette, Environmental Analyst (VT ANR) — Solid Waste Program]: No, it is a free disposal, which obviously has some incentive as well, but there is not an incentive to bring it.

[Representative Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Okay. Just very simply, just where do we export to, do they what do they do with the tires?

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: Just I don't yeah. Sure. For the for the most part, tires generated in Vermont are used for fuel in paper mills in May.

[Representative Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Right. But I'm saying, do we export to other countries? We don't export. Okay.

[Shannon Choquette, Environmental Analyst (VT ANR) — Solid Waste Program]: No. There is a growing trend of exporting to India, just whole baled hires, but we do not do that.

[Representative Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: And just the other question, has there been any thought to creating more recycling facilities in Vermont? Or is that, you know, is that feasible or is it, you know, economic? I'm just curious.

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: No. You should you should jump in. My sense is it's not economic. I mean, you normally need a scale that's much larger than what you would see generated in Vermont. And I guess I would say that Vermont, you know, the act of recycling tires is not the the number of permits and the complexity of building a facility like that in Vermont probably doesn't make it something that you are looking to do.

[Representative Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Okay. The

[Shannon Choquette, Environmental Analyst (VT ANR) — Solid Waste Program]: facility that the majority of Vermont's tires are hauled to and hauled by is BDS Tire Recycling out of Maine. And so just to get a sense of how large his area is, he collects from the vast majority of Vermont places, except for the Rutland area, would expect, where he usually is Bob's tires. And he not only collects from certified solid waste transfer stations, but also retailers and has tires delivered to him from retailers. And the majority of those tires are made into TDF or paper mills, but he has increased his ability to make crumb rubber as well. But as I understand it, crumb rubber, like we spoke about, is the more finer material that can be used in molded But rubber because of the composition of tires, it's typically the large truck tires that lend themselves well for that recycling. Whereas TDF, considered recycling, but the passenger tires aren't as well for creating that crumb rubber. But he has increased his technologies to be able to increase his capacity of crumb rubber manufacturing. And so, the markets have allowed him to, he has expanded his operations. He also purchased a facility in Massachusetts, and so he really does offer the large majority of services to Vermonters in this field.

[Representative Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Thank you so much.

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: Alright. So if there are no further questions per the request, I'm happy to pivot to fire extinguishers.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Yeah,

[Representative Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: I don't know about why do we have to have by having a PRO, how is that gonna improve things? There's gonna be costs. They're gonna be passed on. It could have an effect on those tire manufacturers that wanna participate in the state, which can have an effect on businesses that sell those tires. I mean, why can't this be done within the certified hauler thing seems to me like it's I mean, we're already at 95%. Right? That is the best estimate of what's going on. So again, I It's not really broken.

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: You know, I guess I would say, and again, I would say this, right? Like, I think that of all of the EPR programs the state might look at at this point, Tires meet sort of what I would call the qualifications of what we would be looking for to have an EPR program around. They're difficult to manage. They're prone to illegal disposal. I think part of the challenge we've seen is that a point of disposal fee discourages some people from properly managing their tires. Again, maybe not everyone, But that leads to either inappropriate disposal or just illegally throwing them into some place. I think that this is a problem. When you talk to people in your communities, it may only be 5%. There's probably no single concern that gets raised with us as much as tire management, just by people in your communities coming to the state and saying, we have a real problem with this illegal tire pile. Can you do something about it?' But I also want to say that there are lots of different ways of handling it. Point of disposal fees do tend to act as a disincentive for people to properly manage materials. So to the extent that we can lessen the burdens on people at the time of their getting rid of their tires so that they manage them properly, I think that's ideal. I mean, So I guess that's sort of our our sense with respect to this.

[Mark Rochford, Owner, Vermont Tire]: I'd love to talk on this if if can.

[Representative Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: I think you have to get permission from the chair.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Are you through with your testimony?

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: I'm happy to go ahead and and conclude. Yes.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Thank you.

[Representative Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: To fire extinguishers. Can we I mean

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: fire extinguishers after Mark testify?

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: I'm I'm happy to do that as well. I'm happy to wait and have Mark come up and testify.

[Representative Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: Thank you

[Representative Chittenden]: very much. You're welcome. So to confirm, you want me to update the agenda? Yes. Okay.

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: Hi there.

[Mark Rochford, Owner, Vermont Tire]: Hi there. I'm Introduce yourself. I'm Mark Rochford. I own Vermont Tire. I am the only Vermont owned distributor tire distributor in the country in the state. I'm responsible for one fifth of all tire sold in the state, and I'm the only distributor and that has owns our buildings. Every other one that is in the operates in the state is leased and can pull out at any time, and I have direct connection with a number of manufacturers. So I think I'm in a good place to talk about this. Also, I believe that the legacy tire piles are a major problem. We support Greenup Day. We sponsor it. We loan our trucks and our employees to help with Green Up Day every year. So so it's definitely I'm I'm on board with that. But going about it with how this bill goes, I think it's coming at the wrong direction and it'll lead to a lot of unintended consequences. One of which is putting it on the manufacturers. I talked to three of the major manufacturers and we got some lead time on this because Connecticut did put a bill that out and got it passed, which is basically the same bill. As it is right now, the tire manufacturers, the three biggest ones that I talked to that would actually care about anything in Vermont have for the most part ignored the Connecticut bill other than passing it to their lawyers. But one thing that another problem that I have with putting it on the manufacturers is there are 11 manufacturers in the country that are connected and have brick and mortar in the country, manufactured in the country. Out of those, four, maybe five have enough volume of tires in Vermont to actually care about our state at all. And then outside of that, only 0.2% of the tires sold in The United States come from The US. A few years ago after COVID, Goodyear Tire had a problem where they were running out of capacity. There was a surge in people needing tires after COVID. They couldn't make all seasons. They completely discontinued their winter tires just to make up supply for that. That was 3% of their business that they just decided to wipe off for a year to help out a different part. So the interest of involvement with manufacturers in this, I think would be very difficult. And then, not only that, it would only be out of those 11, maybe five that would have any interest at all. As a whole, there's over 160 tire manufacturers in the world. So, a lot of those are import tires, but that's a lot of where the real price effective tires are as well. I just did a lookup on a February, which is the most common tire sold in the state. It's your it's your RAV4, it's your CRB, it's your Forester, it's most common tire. By putting taking out off an import manufacturer, all of sudden, the cost for four tires out the door installed on the car goes jumps $250 roughly. So, all a sudden, we're hitting everybody's affordability pretty seriously and that $4 on the front end to dispose of the tire really is not much at all compared to that. The other problem that the way the bill is currently written doesn't take into account how tires enter the state. Basically, myself, Nokian tires are the only two companies that take trailers in that buy tires by the trailer directly from the manufacturer. There's NTW, which is a tire distributor that has brick and mortar here, and there's US Auto Force that is in Randolph, but both of those buildings are leased. They both have other warehouses directly outside of the state, and it would be nothing for them to just pivot and either remove those warehouses and start importing from out of state, or just transfer tires in from out of state. That's another thing. Everything's based on sales on this, so take a national chain. They have a distribution center in some other part of the country. They can transfer tires in and that's not a sale, that's just an internal transfer, so that the tires actually aren't paid attention to this at all. In fact, most of the tires that enter the state that don't come from me come on a box truck, just like a daily box truck from someplace, Meramec or Albany or any number of places, some from Maine, but there's no real way of tracking that either. I think a simpler way to approach it opposed to upending the entire tire industry and possibly making everything drastically more expensive for your average Vermonter would be just a tire fee. Like, put on a $2 tire environmental disposal fee. Everybody's used to that. Do it on sale, so it's not they can't avoid it. And that generates like he was right with the numbers. That's what I've heard. It's always been like 600,000 to 645,000. So that's one point two, one point four million every year that would go to that problem. That is a million dollars to fix. None of this addresses the problem with the tire piles I know of. I know of one outside of Middlebury and that was a guy who took in all these tires because Albany was testing an energy mill that used tires and then they wrote that off and he was collecting all these tires thinking that was going be his get rich quick scheme. And then I know this other guy in Bethel who is one of the tire piles where he was just jobless and had all this company land and would take in tires at a fee until he got caught. None of it this bill doesn't do anything to affect that. And and honestly, I don't have a good answer for that, but I I think a tire fee would at least clean up the tire piles we have right now. And if we're running at 95%, I don't think they'll come back in any quick form. And, yeah, if you guys have any questions for me, I'm happy to give my knowledge.

[Representative Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: Thank you, Mark.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Thank you very much. Excuse me. Representative Austin had No.

[Representative Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: No. I didn't.

[Representative Chittenden]: I just don't know.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Representative Chittenden.

[Representative Chittenden]: Can you just I'm going back to the beginning of your testimony where you thought you said you were the only distributor, and then you said that there might be other distributors.

[Mark Rochford, Owner, Vermont Tire]: I'm the only distributor based

[Representative Chittenden]: Wait. I'll finish my question.

[Representative Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: Okay. Sorry.

[Representative Chittenden]: No problem. I'm just trying to take things up slower pace here in this room sometimes to get the good testimony. So I guess just we're all pretty novice except for one or two of us in the room who have worked in this industry. So if you could just describe a little bit more how many distributors scale, if you could share the name of your business, that might be helpful.

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: Or a

[Mark Rochford, Owner, Vermont Tire]: month higher. That's what I figured. And

[Representative Chittenden]: just a little bit more about how the industry works and exactly which entities would be particularly affected by it as well.

[Mark Rochford, Owner, Vermont Tire]: Okay. So, I am Vermont Tire. I have two retail stores, one in Montpelier, one in South Burlington, but roughly 90% of my business is actually wholesale distribution. So so I deliver it to your car dealers, your mom and pop shops, your your other your other tire stores. In this day and age, just about nobody other than than companies like me are are direct. And and out of that, I'm kind of the last of the Mohicans. I'm one of the last higher wholesaler and distributors out there or and with retail stores. Outside of me, I compete with these multibillion dollar national conglomerates and regional conglomerates, are US Auto Force. They're a national company that actually got their start in oil shipping, but they're one of, if not the biggest tire distributors in the country. There's ATD. They bring tires in out of Merrimack to here. They're another national company that that is that is declared bankruptcy twice and in recent years and is owned by a conglomerate. There's NTW, which is which they have a location in Williston, and next to that, they were they were coming in from Albany. They are co owned from Sumitomo Tires and Michelin Tires. There's Sullivan, which is, another retailer, wholesaler, but they are region wide. They cover the entire East Coast, and they come into the state out of Merrimack, New Hampshire. And then and then finally, there's Town Fair Tire, which is owned by Mavis. They are primarily a retail operation, but they wholesale around their retail stores. They have a massive warehouse in Connecticut and are the primary. They've been going back and forth with the Connecticut bill in that state. Because one of their things this is another thing that that neither bill takes into advantage. Like like, they have a mixing warehouse in in Connecticut, and they the way the bill is is is written, they are charged for every tire that enters that warehouse, even though only a third of them are sold in the state. We have the same sort of thing where all of our tires come into Vermont, but we actually sell Upstate New York and Upstate New Hampshire.

[Representative Chittenden]: Thanks. And so can you just remind us, because we haven't walked through this, Phil, in a little while, exactly what, where, how the PRO who would be required to engage in the PRO?

[Mark Rochford, Owner, Vermont Tire]: The way this is written, it's the tire manufacturers that best have the initial burden, which and the tire manufacturers definitely don't care. But the way it's written for a tire to be sold in the state, that tire manufacturer has to sign on board with this bill and have a tire stewardship bill in place that is approved and managed every year, I think they're charged like $15,000 a year. Yeah, something like that. They have to give tires or they have to dispose of tires for free from people and take in up to 12 tires with each visit, which that's another thing. People could easily start a little cottage business of pulling tires out from other states and bring them into Vermont, but at no cost to the customer at any point. And this is all supposed to be driven by the tire manufacturers for them to sell in the state. Tires don't But tire manufacturers don't even know where their tires are sold. The tire manufacturers I deal with know where they're sold because they're selling to me and I'm distributing them. But if a manufacturer is delivering to Merrimack, New Hampshire, that's all they know. They don't know that they're coming up here, and that would come down to the the retailer to know what they're selling, but but they don't know who who's in involved in what. That's another problem with that I came up with with the bill.

[Representative Chittenden]: I'm hearing is that not a lot of players, many of them actually, in terms of manufacturers, are either international or huge conglomerates, and and it would be easy for some disruption to the system.

[Mark Rochford, Owner, Vermont Tire]: Yes. Well, and out of these, all these distributors are not tire manufacturers. Basically, have 11 tire manufacturers. Think of your your Goodyear, which owns Cooper Tire, Nokian Tire, is based in in Finland. Goodyear is actually the only US company at this point that that is a tire manufacturer. Bridgestone Firestone is another one for Pirelli tires, but they don't care about Vermont because almost nobody sells those tires here. Toyo tires, so those are the only manufacturers. Manufacturers. Everybody else is just a distributor of them. And out of them, most any place you get a tire, they have no relationship with a manufacturer. They don't know anything. They probably have a relationship with me or somebody like me, but that's it.

[Representative Chittenden]: Thanks for those details. Thank

[Mark Rochford, Owner, Vermont Tire]: you. Anybody else have any questions?

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: You've explained it real well.

[Representative Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Thank you. Have.

[Representative Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: Thank you.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Thank you for your flexibility. Oh, you're more than welcome.

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: So fire extinguishers. So my understanding is that you heard from both the fire extinguisher manufacturers in Vermont entities as well as the Addison, excuse me, Addison County Solid Waste District. Believe it was yesterday or the day before on a request for an exemption from the HHW EPR law for fire extinguishers. And I I guess the agency both shares the concern that the SWIMmates have raised that these fire extinguishers are sold at retail. They're ending up it at collection facilities at the solid waste management entities, that these are not purely commercial, and that while they are subject to the law vis a vis they are gas cylinders and creating challenges from that perspective in district management processes, I. E. We've heard stories of them exploding in the context of their management at these sweat mates. So I think we would be concerned with an exemption without any sort of conditions associated with that exemption. And that's not to say there aren't other ways these

[Representative Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: could

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: be managed. They could they could have their own program. They could have I know that there are a number of people who are looking to have their own stewardship. Understanding is the fire extinguisher distributors basically take the extinguishers back free of charge from from districts if they're called and requested to take them. That that is ultimately kind of what we're looking for in the context of these programs. So I don't want to dismiss the concerns raised by the fire extinguisher industry, but I also think there is a real challenge out in the feed the solid waste management entity field as far as managing these signatures, and they are not purely commercial. They are being sold at retail. We're seeing them. You know, when we we did a basic online search and saw them at major retailers that are located in Vermont being sold. So that I'm happy to answer questions, but that's sort of the agency's perspective on this.

[Representative Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Yes. I didn't get this the other part of your sentence, with exemptions without any

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: Any conditions associated with them? I mean, I I certainly could see if the committee wanted to create some sort of conditional exemption that allowed them to be exempt from the program, but continue their ongoing free collection service by that that might be something, again, I'm that the agency would be okay with, and you should talk to the salt waste management entities to see whether that is acceptable in their sort of management scheme. But, you know, I I think that that their current practice of picking fire extinguishers when requested, picking them up free of cost, that seems to be the objective that we're searching for in the context of the HHW law to begin with.

[Representative Chittenden]: So what was

[Representative Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: just a follow-up. Just a follow-up. Can you name a few of those conditions that you'd like to see?

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: I mean, to some degree, I guess I would say that the agency is perfectly fine with them staying in the HHW law. I could envision there being a requirement that they accept all extinguishers delivered to a solid waste facility or HHW collection event free of charge as sort of a condition of an exemption, then I'm happy. Again, I'm not good at drafting just on the fly without sort of sitting down and but thinking about that is sort of conceptually.

[Representative Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Okay, great. Thank you.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: So

[Representative Chittenden]: I guess I'm just curious about whether they meet the definition of a hazardous waste. And I think that was part of the argument. And I think it's an important piece to clarify. Would be personally concerned with including things that aren't technically hazardous in a hazardous waste with PMRs. But I also recognize that I think we have a decent system for handling fire extinguishers. So can we design something that's gonna sort of codify and make sure there's some oversight of that system to make sure it continues to function well?

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: So the definition of covered household hazardous waste products includes gas cylinders and includes fire extinguishers in the definition of gas cylinders. So by definition, you have included them into the definition of what's covered by the law. Know, I I am I to the best of my knowledge and belief, there there is not a federally listed hazardous waste that is contained within a fire extinguisher. I have not looked at what the chemical composition of a fire extinguisher is to say whether there's not other problem materials. And, I think the the issue that has really been the concern is the pressurization of that cylinder and the possibility of an explosion when it ends up at on the tip floor of a solid waste management facility. Right? So when you're you're operating heavy equipment trying to move material around on the tip floor of a facility and all of a sudden, a gas cylinder explodes and shrapnel fires pipes every around everywhere. That's the concern to worker safety and other issues that's trying to be addressed by including them in this process.

[Representative Chittenden]: And how long have they been? We're talking about a pretty recent bill where we defined them as a gas cylinder, or are you talking about something that's been in place for longer?

[Representative Rob North]: Well, this is the

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: the fire extinguisher provision is it's a part of the HHWEPR law. Right? So when you defined what's covered by that law, you included gas cylinders in the definition of what a covered product is. And And so then by definition, they got wrapped into what was a household hazardous product.

[Representative Chittenden]: So that's pretty recent. Right. Correct. Correct. For many, many years, we have not allowed them in solid in in garbage disposal nor in regular recycling because of the dangers.

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: So I think that for many, many years, solid waste management entities have accepted them at their household hazardous waste collection events and facilities because of the problems they create when they're placed within the normal disposal system. I have a question for you.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: At the one testimony we did have was a description of cylinders, circular, etcetera, hazardous waste ones. I'm familiar with the oxy acetylene for welders. Most of those are charged with either nitrogen or carbon dioxide or straight air for the propellant. Have any history of explosions?

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: So I am unaware of any explosions. You know? So unlike sort of other products where we've received reports of, say, for example, a fire because of a rechargeable battery or or other, I'm unaware of having a solid waste management entity report to the state that there's been an explosion because of these cylinders, but that's not to say it hasn't happened, right? Because when there's a fire, normally emergency services arrive to put the fire out and there's a report that comes in state. That may not be the case with respect to a gas cylinder. So I mean, honestly, I think the and I'm happy to follow-up on this. I'm happy to talk to the salt waste management entities to see what their experience is and whether they've their actual experience, they've had an explosion from one of these cylinders. Any

[Representative Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: other? Thanks, Matt. Senator North. Just a clarification. Back in

[Representative Rob North]: the beginning of your presentation, I just wanna make sure I understood. Did you say one of the problems is that there's not a clear differentiation between residential and commercial fire extinguishers, and that's part of

[Representative Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: the problem? Well, I think

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: part of the argument is that these aren't covered household products because they're not sold at retail. They're sold sort of wholesale or commercially, and that's just the line between that is very it's not been our experience. Right? Like, we we see it's a fuzzy line.

[Representative Rob North]: Trying to exclude exempt the commercial grade, industrial grade fire extinguishers is is that that is is hard to define, and you're gonna end up with some mixture.

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: That that's our experience. I mean, that's what based on some what I would say very rudimentary research, the lines seem to be very difficult, and it seems that the the fire extinguishers that both single use and and refillable are being sold sort of interchangeably both at retail and commercially.

[Representative Rob North]: And that that's

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: a and that is a problem. And then and then we see them showing up the retail, the the the ones that you as a homeowner may have in your house to put a fire out in your kitchen if one happens, ends up at your solid waste district or or frankly, Casella's tip floor or the solid waste management entity's tip floor and the disposal process. So it's trying to, again, pull those problem materials out of the waste stream.

[Representative Rob North]: Representative Tagliavia? Could just put word putting wording into a bill regarding the the contents by weight alleviate your concern about that?

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: I would need to look into that. I mean, I don't know whether there's a distinction between I don't I don't know. It may and it may be that's know, again, if if what we're talking about is much if if we're talking about the size of the cylinder and having larger cylinders that are normally commercial not be included. You know, certainly, that is something if the industry wanted to come to us and show that certain I guess I would just say, I think it's possible they could come to us today with a showing that larger cylinders are only sold in a commercial setting for use in commercial buildings and we would be open to making a decision that they're commercial, not residential, and therefore not subject to the law. I think we have that level of discretion right now. That's we've not seen that level of granularity in the argument they put before us at this point.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Any other questions? If not, thank you very much, man.

[Matt Chapin, Director, Waste Management & Prevention Division (VT ANR)]: Thank you.

[Representative Rob North]: Thanks, man.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Members, can we have six minute vial break? You

[Representative Chittenden]: gave us an

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: I gave you an extra minute

[Representative Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: for