The Great Tire Fire of Bogota

COLOMBIA NEWS — BOGOTA, A tire dump has in Fontibon has burnt for the last several days, sending thick smoke into the air and prompting health alerts from authorities.

Which was fair enough. But what about every single other day, when authorities don’t issue air health alerts? Does that mean Bogotá’s air is breathable?

Compared the tire conflagration, Bogotá’s ‘normal’ air pollution is almost healthy…Homeless people hang out behind the Estación de la Sabana on Calle 13, where they burn collected trash to separate out the metals in order to sell them.

In the wake of this disaster, authorities will talk about imposing strict regulations on dumps, and then do nothing.

But there’s a deeper, more systematic problem here, which Bogotá authorities will be sure to ignore. The city is being inundated by trash, including used tires, which nobody seems to know what to do with. Grind them up to make asphalt? Hang them from trees as playground equipment? After that, you’ll still have 99% of them left, accumulating on streets, parks and in dumps, where homeless people ignite them for warmth and they collect water and breed mosquitoes.

Either society in general can spend a small fortune collecting and burying these tires, thus socializing yet another cost of the auto industry. Or, Colombia could do what many other nations do and tax tire manufacturers and importers and use the tax revenue to dispose of their products.