News: Tire Recycling & Pyrolysis

Tyre Stewardship Australia (TSA) has found in its recent study that Australia annually deals with over 55 million waste tires, with 30 percent of the amount being heavy truck and mining tires. One of sustainable methods to extend life of the precious material is recycling after which rubber can be used in municipal paving projects. Some of the country’s roads are already composed of asphalt mixes and rubber powder spray-seals that contain recycled rubber; their usage is being promoted by the TSA and the industry. In addition, TSA helps create rubberized permeable pavements, which result in promotion of more advanced methods to manage complex water systems in urban areas.

Tire recycling businesses focused on rubber mulch, crumb rubber and rubber powder production now have a chance to make their operations even more green and sustainable. Indeed, production chain of every tire recycling business includes packaging – so called “big bags” made of polypropylene (PP). While recyclers help clean up hazardous tire stockpiles and reuse thousands tons of high-quality rubber in industrial applications, why shouldn’t they deliver their recycled goods using recycled packaging? This article describes recent breakthroughs in designing high-quality sustainable packaging – big bags – made by an Austrian company KSM Solutions.

Two huge piles with thousands of tires were abandoned in Dickens Street, Peterborough, by a rogue trader and now pose a fire risk threatening railway security and households’ safety in the neighborhood. The railway between Birmingham and Stansted Airport may face closure as a result of the illegal actions of a rogue trader from Huntingdon, Michael Newsome. According to prosecutor for the Environment Agency Gurjit Bdesha, the trader rented a site to carry out tire shredding activities which had never taken place. Instead, the land was used as a tire storage and it accommodated more tires than was officially permitted. Moreover, Newsome’s actions – unsanctioned accumulation of large amounts of scrap tires – created a fire risk. The official also noted that the closest household to the dangerous tire site is only 13 meters away.

The Manitoba authorities have expressed their commitment to ongoing scrap tire recycling initiatives stressing that existing producer responsibility organization Tire Stewardship Manitoba will not be dropped. The provincial tire recycling system relies on producer responsibility organization funded by the industry that assists in various sorts of waste disposal and recycling. In total, Manitoba has 12 similar initiatives.

According to Mexico’s Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources, the country witnesses a huge number of neglected discarded tires. Because of the pressing issue, some businesses are willing to construct a tire recycling facility in the Lagunera province, says the Secretary of Environment of Coahuila Eglantina Canales Gutiérrez. Today, there is a scrap tire collection unit in Lagunera province called Paseo de las Piedras 350, but what is still lacking is proper recycling of scrap tires into crumb rubber, steel and other reusable materials.

In Canada, the Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority (RPRA) is expected to replace the Ontario Tire Stewardship (OTS) program that will stop operating as a scrap tire regulator in the end of 2018. According to forecasts, the RPRA’s management will differ from the OTS program that had been in charge of millions of dollars – the substantial sums had been spent to cover tire disposal and tire recycling expenditures.

According to the document, the growth, at some extent, is a result of the anti-Dengue campaign which was launched to alert the public of the threats that may arise when tires are abandoned and serve as breeding place for mosquitos, the report added. The document went on claiming that the rate for tire recycling now exceeds the one of aluminum.

As an example, TSA refers to rubber-modified asphalt testing made by the local road authorities and later published by Australian Asphalt Pavement Association. Also, TSA referred to a project launched by the University of Melbourne aiming to develop an optimum blend of permeable paving that uses recycled tires to create footpaths, bike roads and low-volume traffic roads which also can provide water to nearby trees.

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