May I still destroy unsold tyre stock?

What you must do concretely

What is expected of you

The ESPR contains a separate section on the destruction of unsold consumer goods: Articles 23 to 26 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781. This section is separate from the digital product passport, but affects the same inventory of tyres that may remain unsold or not resold in a warehouse. For a company with 10 to 100 employees — an importer, distributor or fleet manager with its own storage — it is useful to know what these articles aim for, even though not every detail for the tyre sector has yet been filled in.

Disclosure of destruction figures

Article 24 of the ESPR provides for an obligation for certain market participants to report on how many unsold products they destroy, and why. This means for an importer or distributor that keeping track of quantities and reasons for disposal is not only an internal accounting matter, but something for which a numerical overview may be requested in the future. Those already keeping inventory management may ask themselves whether "disposed of" and "destroyed" are separately identifiable in their own system.

Possible ban on destruction for certain product groups

Article 23 of the ESPR provides the basis for prohibiting the destruction of unsold consumer goods for specific product groups, via a delegated act. At present, there is no published delegated act for tyres that makes such a prohibition concrete. This means that a generic prohibition on the destruction of unsold tyres does not currently follow from the text of the ESPR itself — it is a power that the Commission can exercise, not a rule that already applies to tyres.

Exceptions and the possibility for exemption

Articles 25 and 26 of the ESPR provide for exceptions to a possible destruction ban, including for smaller enterprises and in specific circumstances. For a business of modest size, it is relevant that the regulation does not assume a single uniform obligation for everyone: the size of the enterprise and the nature of the situation may play a role in determining whether an exception applies. What this concretely means for tyres has not yet been determined.

Where things go wrong in practice

A number of situations recur among businesses that have unsold tyre stock:

Stock is disposed of without the reason being documented. Tyres that are no longer saleable due to wear during storage, seasonal changes in the assortment, or an expiring shelf life, are disposed of via the regular waste stream. Rarely is it noted whether this was destruction, recycling, or something else — information that may become relevant later once reporting obligations become concrete.

It is assumed that "no ban yet" is equivalent to "never a ban". Because no delegated act has been published for tyres yet, it is sometimes assumed that destruction of unsold tyre stock remains a definitive free choice. The ESPR precisely leaves open the possibility of a ban for future product groups.

Return flows and unsold stock are not distinguished from one another. Tyres returned by a customer, tyres that are surplus due to an order change, and tyres that have never been sold at all, often end up in the same disposal bin in practice — with the same administration, or the lack thereof.

No link is made with the product passport of the tyre in question. When a tyre with a passport is destroyed, something changes in the status of that passport and the associated data — a point that touches on what you can record as your own copy of the data contained in the product passport, especially when a tyre has never reached an end user.

Facilities record disposal in their own manner. At companies with multiple locations, unsold inventory is administered differently per site, which makes a complete picture at company level difficult — something that aligns with the question whether multiple sites of a company can manage the same product passport.

What you can record

Without there already being a prohibition or reporting obligation for tyres specifically in force, it is practical to keep track of a number of things, so that any future obligation does not have to be met retroactively:

• An overview of unsold inventory per period, with quantity, tyre type, and reason for disposal (wear, age, return, overproduction).
• A distinction in your own records between "destroyed", "recycled" and "disposed of elsewhere" — even if this distinction is not yet legally required.
• A fixed procedure within the organisation for who decides on disposal of unsold inventory, and on the basis of which criterion.
• Proof of disposal from the processor (certificate of transfer, weighing note, processing certificate), linked to the relevant batch of tyres.
• For sites that manage inventory independently: a shared template or format, so that figures at company level can be combined as soon as that becomes relevant.
• A note in the product passport of tyres that are destroyed before they are sold, so that the status of that passport remains traceable.

This recording is now mainly a matter of orderly management, not a legal obligation arising from articles 23 to 26 of the ESPR for tyres. Anyone wondering how this topic fits into the broader approach towards the product passport can combine that with the steps described in how the product passport for tyres can be tackled step by step, and with the question what can already be done now while the rules are not yet final. As soon as the Commission publishes a delegated act for tyres that specifically implements article 23 of the ESPR, it will be added here what that means for unsold inventory.