Can a national company's entry into Louisiana's market help the state address its longstanding problem with illegal tire dumping?
Liberty Tire Recycling's purchase of Acadiana-based Colt Inc. makes the Pittsburgh company one of just five with Louisiana permits to process used tires in the state. Only three of those permitted companies are currently operating, according to regulatory filings and industry officials.
The purchase gives Liberty Tire access to state revenues from a state Department of Environmental Quality program that subsidizes tire recycling projects. But it is entering a marketplace where a handful of processors operated for years with limited methods of disposing of waste tires in a way that both earned state reimbursements and was profitable.
In recent years, some new entrants promising alternative recycling plans have struggled to gain state permits and break into the market over the established competitors' objections, even as other, existing processors have gone out of business.
Those business failures have, at times, had catastrophic results. In January 2022, the abandoned tire storage facility of shuttered processor Cottonport Monofill caught fire, forced the evacuation of a nearby state prison and took days to extinguish.
Dumped tires are seen in a vacant lot on E. Polk Street and Nebraska Street, Tuesday, January 27, 2026, in Baton Rouge, La.
STAFF PHOTO BY HILARY SCHEINUK
Despite the state program, illegal tire dumps have remained a big enough problem that previous DEQ Secretary Aurelia Giacometto created a new grant program to help local governments and issued a report calling for new ways to reuse processed tires. A few years ago, state highway crews had to be called in to clean up a large illegal tire dump in New Orleans East.
This spring, the Legislature adopted a resolution sponsored by state Rep. Alonzo Knox, D-New Orleans, forming a task force with multi-agency and community group representation to study the problem. Staffed by DEQ, the task force must have its first meeting by Sept. 1.
In 2025, Liberty Tire says, it collected 219 million tires nationwide, reclaimed 4.8 billion tons of rubber and was able to put 81% of that material into nationwide reuse markets ranging from road material to yard mulch and bordering.
The company has an to take tires that the national retailer collects from its automotive shops and to recycle the rubber into gardening products sold at the stores. Liberty Tire also provides similar recycled yard products to Home Depot, say.
The company has also worked with to test the use of waste tires to supply carbon for steelmaking, it says.
'New opportunities'
Liberty Tire, which is in the $60 billion global portfolio of I Squared Capital, a Miami, Florida, private equity firm, has a goal of reaching 100% reuse of the waste tires it collects by 2030.
Company officials said their purchase of Colt and two other companies in Texas will give them the ability "to provide integrated tire collection, processing and recycled material solutions throughout the Gulf Coast while increasing capacity to meet growing customer demand for sustainable end-of-life tire management."
"We look forward to combining our expertise with their proven success to provide customers across the Gulf Coast with expanded capabilities, stronger regional service, and new opportunities for sustainable end-of-life tire management," said Thomas Womble, chief executive officer of Liberty Tire.
In the statement, company officials said they would retain the senior leadership of the companies they were buying.
Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development crews removed hundreds of illegally dumped tires near the Eastover subdivision in New Orleans East on Friday, January 14, 2022. (Photo by Chris Granger | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
PHOTO BY CHRIS GRANGER
Neither the sale price nor what Liberty Tire plans to do with Louisiana tires was disclosed, though a company spokesman said Liberty Tire had previously used some of Colt's waste tire supply.
Officials at Colt, which is based in Scott and has a New Orleans office, didn't return calls for comment.
DEQ officials said Liberty Tire officials have informed them that the company didn't plan any major changes from Colt's operations at least for the next few years. Greg Langley, an agency spokesman, declined further comment Wednesday.
Aimed at reducing tire dumps and keeping waste tires out of municipal landfills, the DEQ program uses fees consumers pay when they buy new tires to finance recycling projects. It also employs a fee manifest system to track tires for reimbursement eligibility.
Tires for cars and light trucks cost $2.25 each; tire fees for larger vehicles are higher.
To collect state reimbursement dollars, processors must show they have processed tires that had fees associated with their purchase and have dealt with them through an approved "beneficial use" project. Many projects in recent years have revolved around burying ground-up tires for highway embankments and similar structures, regulatory papers show.
The initial processing usually involves chopping up whole tires into small chips.
Court ruling
In 2025, Colt had processed at least 76 million pounds of tires and was seeking at least $4.7 million in state reimbursement fees, monthly reports show.
The sale announcement comes almost a year after a trade group representing the previous owners of Colt and the three other then-existing tire processors lost their two-year legal battle with DEQ to block a permit for a new tire processing company in the Alsen area north of Baton Rouge.
Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development crews removed hundreds of illegally dumped tires near the Eastover subdivision in New Orleans East on Friday, January 14, 2022. (Photo by Chris Granger | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
PHOTO BY CHRIS GRANGER
In late July 2025, a three-judge panel of the state 1st Circuit Court of Appeal unanimously upheld a lower court ruling that DEQ acted properly in approving the permit for Baum Industries.
The lawsuit revolved around whether enough market demand for waste tires existed to support another tire processing company and whether DEQ properly considered the marketplace before issuing the permit in 2023.
Baum Industries told DEQ it expects to handle as much as 5,400 waste tires daily and plans to create a product used for controlling sediment runoff with them. Operations could start in about three months, the company's owner said.
Another recently permitted startup operation, Lafourche Environmental, isn't expected to begin processing at its Cutoff location until the end of the year or early next year, that company's owner said. The company won't be making tire chips but significantly compressing and banding whole stacks of tires.
About a month before the 1st Circuit ruling, existing tire processor Franklin Rubber Resources was evicted from its Winnsboro industrial park for nonpayment following a series of fires, a state fire marshal cease-and-desist order and environmental compliance problems, according to regulatory papers and .
Editor's note: This story was updated 9:54 a.m. Monday, July 27, 2026, to correct the party of state Rep. Alonzo Knox. He is a Democrat.
Editor's note: Comments from Greg Langley, a Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality spokesman, were added Wednesday, July 22, 2026, at 2:40 p.m.