Scrap Tires

Scrap Tires A Global Issue

Scrap tire piles litter North America, approximately 3 billion.

Images of stockpiled tires scattered around the countryside or in vacant lots are familiar to most people. According to Rubber Manufacturer’s Association (RMA), there are 450 million scrap tires generated annually in the United States (over one per person per year). With an average scrap tire weight of 22.5 pounds, this represents well over 6 billion pounds of predominantly hydrocarbon based materials generated annually that are largely underutilized.

Constructive use of scrap tires has accelerated over the last ten years and significantly alleviated historic tire dump issues (which create fire and disease hazards). The RMA reports 52% of scrap tires are burned for fuel, 12% are used in “crumb” rubber products (such as door mats), 16% is used for civil engineering applications, but at least 14% is ground and sent to landfills. The fuel and crumb rubber applications are constructive uses of scrap tires, but have technical limitations and marginally attractive economics.

Scrap tires are considered harmful waste because they:

• Leach harmful toxins into the environment
• Are a home for mosquitoes, rats & snakes
• Have the potential to create harmful fires
• Emit significant amounts of CO2 & dioxins when burned as fuel

In virtually all environmentally responsible countries, burying tires or tire shred in landfills is now against the law.  Similarly, several countries and many state and provincial governments have banned the use of tires or tire derived fuel (tire shred) for use as fuel in cement kilns and paper mills. In 2007 the European Union banned whole tires from landfill and yet 50% of all scarp tires produce in the EU are still landfilled as engineering cover. There are very few economic uses for scrap tires, with crumb rubber being the primary product but of little mass market use.

Mobius Enviro-Solutions has an integrated solution that superior to any other form of tire recycling. The complete solution to the global tire recycling issue, hands down. Mobius technologies are economically attractive and produce new tires using technically advanced equipment to achieve a precise remanufactured tire that is superior in quality and performance over alternative retread tires. Beyond the production of new tires Mobius’s commercially proven technologies also recover valuable commodities from used tire casing that are not suitable for remanufacturing. This same technology can also process a wide variety of waste rubber products while making significant positive environmental reductions in solid waste and air emissions. This process accepts any rubber product and recovers three distinct product streams with no unusable end-products – steel, refined diesel oil and carbon black.