How do they re-cycle Used Tires and keep them out of the ground, rivers and lakes?  

Thanks to Frank Matta, the Valley Boys and all our Tire divers!

When I was young I drove cars that had tires with a lot of tread wear. I learned how to change flat tires. Now that I’m older, I’ve learned to call AAA and buy new whitewall radials. I guess its called being responsible and working for a living. At $100 bucks a pop for each tire, I didn’t want to pay taxes or anything else. What the heck I threw it on the credit card and didn’t have to think about it for another month. Somewhere on the invoice was a re-cycling charge which I begrudgingly signed for. When I went around the building I saw someone bounce the tires into the fenced in cage. There were no recycling fees for him. At another store, I saw some guy bounce his used tires into the culvert. No fees for him! I guess this is America and if you don’t want to pay the fees, you can say I’m taking them home or at least part way home. How do you stop something like this? Is everyone a hardship case? Do you turn your cheek when someone dumps the tires in a vacant lot or bounces them in the river?  Obviously this has been going on for a long time

The cost that most stores pass on to consumers now is about $.50 to $2.00 per tire which is sometimes included in the tire price. In 1989, used tires were recycled at about a 10% rate where currently according to 2003 figures about 80% of used tires are re-used as another type of product in this country. Hopefully that figure rises as land fills currently ban the disposal of tires underground. So what happened to all the tires from previous generations? Most of them are stockpiled throughout the country in huge piles. Some are visible from outer space. The largest tire pile is located in Hudson, Co. which has about 30 million used tires on site. A recent tire pile in Virginia took fire crews seven months to extinguish as chemical foam is required. They do not show these sites to your average tourist. Storing used tires has also created a haven for mosquito breeding and rodent infestation. Everyone who drives a car is responsible in some way for these tire dumps.

Tire are recycled in many ways, I will break it down different ways, Easiest first. The side walls are cut out, leaving the tread to be sold to people that glue them together. Some are then sliced into sections to make, motor mounts, non pneumatic hard small tires, used for brush hogs, and other small equipment, where ride comfort is not important. Others make these treads into floor mats for industrial use. They make them into sandals, mats to protect working people standing on hard concrete flooring. If the re cycler is not equipped to do all of these things, they buy a huge very expensive tough shredder, Tires are one of the hardest things to shred, upkeep on these shredders is extremely expensive and time consuming and has to be done at least monthly with complete replacement of the blades twice a year. The ideal size of the shreds is about two to three inches long when tires are put on a conveyor belt and sent through this shredder. They come out of the shredder to another conveyor then through a large round, rolling screen where the smallest, most easily used pieces fall out. The larger pieces then have to be resent for a second time to the shredder it order to make it small enough to allow almost all of the steel belting to either be removed in the screening process or by magnets. This material is, if you are extremely lucky, sold in huge bulk piles for shipment, to China etc. where shredding is continued to crumb size. It is then re-melted to be made in to all types of products, such as seep hoses, mats, non permeable decking lumber, rails, and fences. Surprisingly there is almost no use for the steel banding; it is so difficult to remove the synthetic rubber.

There is another increasingly popular use. Incinerating tires for energy recovery utilizes scrap tires that might otherwise be landfilled, produces energy, and saves money as other fuels are replaced partially by scrap tires. This beneficial use has greatly increased in the last decade. Tires produce the same amount of energy as oil and 25% more energy than coal. The oil equivalency of a passenger tire is 7 gallons and the heat content of shredded tires is 10 to 16% higher than that of coal. Tires have a high heating value—each pound of scrap tire rubber is equivalent to 15,000 BTUs of energy. While this maybe one way to keep tires out of t he landfill, the burning of tires creates another hazard of putting carbon based emissions into the atmosphere. There are no easy solutions. Used tires will continually show up as people on the planet find suitable cures such as creating artificial reefs, highway bumpers, asphalt, playground flooring, garden planters, earthship homes and backyard swings. With more cars on the road in India and China, technology will have to adapt.

What is the current status of tire recycling and disposal in the US*?

*2003 statistics, Rubber Manufacturers Association

Sources:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081102144655AAyCMFG    

http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/materials/tires/faq.htm#ques2

Written by Conservation Chairman Bill Luther