WESTMORELAND CLEANWAYS

Fugitive Tire Roundup

The Fugitive Tire Roundup is popular with organized youth groups who want to help the environment and earn some "reward" money for their organization. Plans for this year's 2010 Roundup are underway. This annual program, sponsored by area tire dealers, recruits youth groups (posses) from Westmoreland County to capture tires that have escaped into the wild (fields, streams, roadsides) and turn them in to participating tire dealers for proper disposal. By corralling the illegally dumped tires, each posse will earn a bounty that it can use to further its own community projects.

Since 1995, over 50,000 fugitive tires that blighted our Westmoreland County landscape have been captured. Scout groups, school groups, 4-H and church groups earned over $37,500 in bounty payments that flowed back into our community through other service projects. The Roundup is a valuable tool to help rid our landscape of illegally disposed tires, to educate participants on the environmental damage caused by the dumping, and to foster community pride.

This year, special focus will be on the tire piles identified in PA CleanWays' 2009 Illegal Dump Survey. Literally thousands of tires were found in a majority of the 300 Westmoreland County sites. We'd like to concentrate on cleaning up those sites, and request that posses target those tires for this year's roundup. A complete list of sites is available here. The site list begins on page 29 of the report. Sites are listed by municipality, with an approximate number of illegally dumped tires.

To join the Fugitive Tire Roundup, posses must follow a few rules:
1. Pre-register by March 19, 2010.
2. Choose one Saturday in April (3, 10, 17, or 24) on which to conduct the cleanup.
3. Turn tires in to a participating tire dealer assigned by Westmoreland Cleanways.
4. Tires cannot be stockpiled prior to the collection date; no tires can be collected from businesses or private individuals.
5. Tires must be collected and turned in on the same day.
6. Only tires off-rim can be accepted, and tires must be turned in to the tire dealer by Noon of the scheduled collection date.

To collect the bounty:
1. A bounty is paid for the first 200 tires turned in ($.75 per tire; maximum of $150). Many posses capture many more than that.
2. Posses are encouraged to take before-and-after photos of the cleanup sites and to discuss reasons the tires may have been illegally dumped.
3. Participants must complete a survey after the Roundup and return it to Westmoreland Cleanways in order to claim the bounty.

A complete set of the rules and regulations is available by clicking here.

So recruit your posse, pick a date, and register for the Fugitive Tire Roundup by March 19. Email Michelle at mkeenan@westmorelandcleanways.org or call 724-836-4129.

We would like to thank all of the youth groups who participated in the 2010 Fugitive Tire Roundup. Due to your efforts, 2428 "fugitive tires" were captured from the wild and brought to justice for proper disposal. That is roughly 25 tons of tires!

 

We would like to recognize the following groups for their dedication and stewardship to the environment:

We would also like to thank our participating tire dealers: Import-Export Tire Company, Export Tire Company, Flynn's Tire & Auto Service, and Moore's Tire Service, Inc. Without their support, this program would not exist.