Do scrap tyres contain any recoverable metal value (steel belting/wire)?
Short answer: Yes — most passenger and truck radial tyres contain steel belting and bead wire, and industrial-scale tyre recyclers do recover this steel during the shredding process, but the quantity of steel per tyre is small and requires specialised shredding equipment to separate, so this isn't something an individual can practically extract themselves — the recoverable value belongs to whoever operates the processing equipment, not the person dropping off a single tyre.
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List Free →How much steel is actually in a tyre
A typical passenger tyre contains a relatively small amount of steel by weight in its belts and bead wire — enough to be worth recovering at industrial scale across thousands of tyres, but not enough to be meaningful from a single tyre.
Why this doesn’t translate to a payout for you
Extracting that steel requires shredding and magnetic separation equipment that only large-scale recyclers operate — the value it generates helps offset a recycler’s costs (which is one reason disposal fees aren’t higher than they are), but it doesn’t reach back to the individual dropping off tyres.
Where this steel actually ends up
Recovered tyre steel typically re-enters the general scrap steel market alongside other ferrous scrap, sold in bulk by the recycling operation rather than tracked per tyre.
How ScrapTrade Fits In
If you operate or work with a tyre recycling facility that recovers steel wire in bulk, that’s exactly the kind of ferrous scrap that can be listed and sold to verified buyers on ScrapTrade.
If your tyre recycling or disposal process recovers scrap steel, ScrapTrade connects that material with verified buyers through escrow-protected payments and transparent weighing.
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