Tyre-burning flares: what data to collect and how to upload it

If one or more of your sites burn tyres in flares, those emissions belong in your carbon footprint, even if you’ve never measured them. This guide explains, in plain terms, which data Dcycle needs and how to load it. Sites with flares, sites with other process emissions and sites with neither all live in the same organization in Dcycle. Each site only fills in what applies to it.

Who	What to read
Management	Which sites need what and How the calculation works, 3 minutes
Environmental engineer	The whole guide, then fill in the data table
Whoever enters the data in Dcycle	Part 2: Upload the data

Part 1: What we need

Why flares count

Under the GHG Protocol, burning tyres in your flares is stationary combustion, part of Scope 1: the emissions released directly at your facilities. The GHG Protocol lists flares and incinerators as stationary combustion sources. It isn’t a process emission: process emissions come from a physical or chemical transformation of a material, such as limestone calcination in cement, not from burning something. If the flare is on your site, the CO₂ is yours to report.

This applies whether you burn the tyres to get rid of them or to use their energy. The two cases are recorded the same way in Dcycle, but the emission factor can differ, so we need to know which one applies to you.

Tyres are a mix of synthetic rubber and carbon black (fossil origin) and natural rubber (plant origin). The GHG Protocol reports the fossil part in Scope 1. The plant-based part, the biogenic CO₂, is reported separately, outside the scopes. Dcycle keeps the two apart for you, as long as we know how much you burned.

Which sites need what

Go through your sites one by one. Each site falls into one or more of these cases:

Does the site have…	What it needs to provide
Tyre-burning flares	Flare data
Other process emissions (for example calcination, chemical reactions, gas leaks from equipment)	Process emission data
Neither	Nothing from this guide. It only reports its usual data: electricity, gas, vehicles

All the sites stay in the same Dcycle organization. A site with flares and another process simply provides both blocks.

Data for each flare

Fill in one line per flare and per period. The period can be a month, a quarter or the full year, whatever your records allow.

Data	Required	Why we ask	Where to find it
Site	Yes	To assign the emissions to the right facility	—
Flare name or ID	Yes	To tell the 7 flares apart and follow each one over time	Internal equipment list
Purpose of the burning: disposal of the tyres, or energy recovery (heat or power used on site)	Yes	It decides how the burning is classified and which emission factor applies	Environmental permit, operations manager
Start and end date of the period	Yes	Emissions are reported per year	—
Tonnes of tyres burned	Yes	This is the key figure: emissions are proportional to the mass burned	Weighbridge tickets, delivery notes from the tyre supplier or waste manager, stock records
Fuel that feeds the flare (type and quantity)	If any	Gas, diesel or LPG burned by the flare also emits CO₂. It’s counted separately from the tyres, with its own factor	Fuel invoices or tank readings
Calorific value or carbon content of the tyres	Optional	Makes the result more precise than a standard reference value	Lab analysis or supplier technical sheet

Data for other process emissions

If a site also has other process emissions, meaning gases released by a chemical or physical transformation rather than by burning a fuel, the data depends on the process. Process emissions: what to collect by industry lists what to gather for each industry. At a minimum, for each process and period: what material is processed, how much (in tonnes), and the emission factor if you already have one, for example from a permit or a regulatory declaration.

How the calculation works

The formula is the same for every flare:

Emissions (kg CO₂) = Tonnes of tyres burned × Emission factor (kg CO₂ per tonne)

The emission factor comes from the tyres’ energy content and carbon content. If you don’t have your own lab data, Dcycle uses a published reference value for waste tyres. Commonly used references put tyres at roughly 85 kg CO₂ per GJ, with about a quarter of that CO₂ being biogenic.

Example. A flare burns 100 t of tyres in a year. With an indicative factor of about 2,500 kg CO₂ per tonne:

• Total CO₂: 100 × 2,500 = 250,000 kg = 250 t CO₂
• Fossil part, about 75 %, reported in Scope 1: about 187 t CO₂
• Biogenic part, about 25 %, reported separately: about 63 t CO₂

The figures are illustrative. The final factor is agreed with your Dcycle contact before the data is loaded.

The data table to send back

The easiest way is to send a single table covering all sites. Leave the columns that don’t apply empty:

Site	Flare	Purpose	Start date	End date	Tyres burned (t)	Flare fuel	Flare fuel quantity and unit	Other process (if any)	Process quantity and unit	Notes / source
Site A	Flare 1	Disposal	2025-01-01	2025-12-31	120	Natural gas	3,000 m³	—	—	Weighbridge tickets
Site A	Flare 2	Disposal	2025-01-01	2025-12-31	95	—	—	—	—	Estimate: 11,900 car tyres × 8 kg
Site B	—	—	2025-01-01	2025-12-31	—	—	—	Lime calcination	4,000 t limestone	Production records
Site C	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	No flares or process emissions

Part 2: Upload the data

You need an Editor role in your Dcycle organization.

Step 1: Check each site’s categories

Each site is a facility in Dcycle, and each facility only shows the tabs for the categories it has enabled. That’s how sites with flares, sites with other process emissions and sites with neither can live in the same organization without getting in each other’s way.

1. Go to Data → Categories → Facilities and open the site.
2. Click Edit facility.
3. Tick Combustion if the site has flares, and Process if it has other process emissions. Leave untouched what doesn’t apply.

If the facility doesn’t exist yet, see Setting up your facilities in Dcycle.

Step 2: Create the tyre emission factor

Dcycle’s fuel list doesn’t include tyres, so you load their factor once as a custom emission factor and reuse it for every flare.

1. Go to Data → Emission factors, open the Custom management tab and click Create new.
2. In Category it applies to, choose Combustion. Name it, for example “Tyres burned in flares 2025”, and describe the source of the factor and whether it’s disposal or energy recovery in Description.
3. Set Biogenic to No for the fossil part.
4. Open the grouping, click Add factors and enter the value per t, for the validity period of your data. Use Simple for a single kg CO₂e figure, or Advanced to enter CO₂ (in kg), CH₄ and N₂O (in grams) separately. Attach the source document (lab analysis or reference) as a PDF.

To also report the biogenic part, create a second Combustion grouping with Biogenic set to Yes and load its factor the same way. Only its CO₂ is moved out of Scope 1; CH₄ and N₂O keep counting. Your Dcycle contact can help you split the factor between the two. For the full walkthrough with screenshots, see Upload process emissions and measure them. The screens are the same; only the category changes.

Step 3: Record each flare

1. Open the site’s facility and click the Combustion tab.
2. Click Add data and choose to add it manually.
3. In Emission factor, switch from the default database to your custom factor and select “Tyres burned in flares 2025”.
4. Enter the quantity in t, which must be the same unit as the factor, and the start and end date of the period.
5. Under Optional information, write the flare’s name, for example “Flare 3”, in the invoice ID field. That way you can find each flare later.
6. Save. If you also created the biogenic grouping, add a second record with the same tonnes and the biogenic factor.

Repeat for each flare and period: 7 flares over a full year means 7 records, or 14 if you split out the biogenic part.

Step 4: Record the fuel that feeds the flares

If a flare burns gas, diesel or LPG to ignite or keep running, add that fuel in the same Combustion tab as a separate record, with Dcycle’s default factor. Pick the fuel from the list and enter the quantity in the unit on your invoice. Dcycle converts it automatically. See Upload a stationary combustion invoice.

Step 5: Record other process emissions

For sites with other processes, follow Upload process emissions and measure them in the facility’s Process tab.

Step 6: Check the result

Open any record and expand Calculation results to see the formula Dcycle applied. The flares show up in Scope 1 on the dashboard, next to the rest of the site’s emissions. You can filter by facility to see each site separately.

Checklist

• Each site is classified: flares, other processes, both or neither
• For each site with flares: disposal or energy recovery
• Tonnes of tyres burned per flare and per period, with the source noted
• Fuels that feed the flares identified, if any
• Tyre emission factor agreed and loaded as a custom Combustion factor
• One Combustion record per flare and per period, plus one per flare fuel
• Other process emissions loaded in the Process tab of the right sites

If you’re unsure which case a site falls into, or which factor to use, contact Dcycle support and we’ll review it with you.