Georgia Tire Disposal Law: Where to Legally Get Rid of Old Tires

01What Georgia law actually says

O.C.G.A. § 12-8-40.1 is the controlling statute. Since December 31, 1994, no one may dispose of whole scrap tires in a Georgia solid waste landfill; they have to be shredded, chopped, or chipped first, with narrow exceptions mainly for very small quantities carried alongside other household waste. Cities, counties, and solid waste authorities have also had the right to impose their own additional restrictions on scrap tire disposal since 1990.

The law also regulates who can move tires at all: anyone who collects or transports used tires, as opposed to new ones, needs a tire carrier permit from Georgia's Environmental Protection Division and a decal displayed on the vehicle. That's why a random hauler showing up to take away a stack of old tires for cash is a bigger red flag than it sounds; legitimate operators carry the permit.

02The $1 fee already built into your last set of tires

Georgia has charged a $1 fee on new tire sales for years to fund the state's Solid Waste Trust Fund, which pays for tire cleanup and recycling programs statewide. A 2023 amendment to O.C.G.A. § 12-8-40.1(h) shifted the responsibility for collecting and remitting that fee from retailers to distributors, the businesses that first sell a tire into Georgia, according to Georgia EPD's own guidance. From a driver's seat that change doesn't show up any differently: the dollar is already baked into what you paid for your current set.

03Where to actually take old tires in West Georgia

The easiest option is leaving them with the shop when you buy new ones. Most tire shops handle disposal for a small per-tire fee as part of the installation, separate from the state's $1 fee, which keeps buying new tires and getting rid of the old set a single visit instead of two errands.

Local amnesty events are the other real option. Carroll County's Keep Carroll Beautiful runs free tire collection events at the Carroll County Transfer Station on Simonton Mill Road, funded in part through Georgia EPD's STAR grant program; recent events accepted up to 10 passenger tires per household free, with additional tires at $5 each and no rims accepted. These events run more than once a year (spring and fall have both hosted one in recent cycles), so check keepcarrollbeautiful.org or your own county's solid waste department for the current schedule.

What doesn't work: setting a stack of old tires at the curb for regular trash pickup or hauling them to a standard landfill. Whole tires get turned away, and a hauler who isn't a permitted tire carrier taking them off your hands isn't a legal disposal path even if it seems like one.

04Why illegal dumping is a real, tracked problem

Stacked tires hold rainwater and become mosquito breeding grounds, and they shelter rodents and snakes, which is the core reason amnesty events and enforcement both exist. Georgia EPD's Tire Management Unit handles permits, inspections, and citizen complaints about illegally dumped tires, and its Recovered Materials Unit runs the grant programs that pay local governments to clean sites up.

The scale gives a sense of how big this has been historically: Georgia's STAR grant program has reimbursed local governments over $5.6 million for removing and recycling more than 1.9 million passenger-tire equivalents statewide, according to EPD's own published totals. That's not a hypothetical problem the law is guarding against; it's one the state has been actively cleaning up for years.