The issue: Tires from cars, trucks, airplanes, bicycles, and off-road vehicles are an
indispensable part of a technological society. They are designed to withstand heavy use
on paved, gravel, and dirt roads, and are made to last indefinitely. This creates a
problem, though: What should be done with tires when they are no longer usable? This
problem is not a small one: Over 240 million tires in the United States alone are retired
from use each year, joining between 2 and 4 billion used tires already stockpiled. Over
60% of used tires are stored in landfills, where these eyesores provide habitat for
rodents and mosquitoes and pose fire hazards (many landfilled tires can burn
uncontrollably for months!). Landfilled tires also tend to rise to the surface of the landfill,
are bulky to discard, and do not decompose. Another form of tire disposal, burning,
produces air pollution, intense heat, and noxious fumes. Only 12% of scrap tires are
recycled or recovered each year in the United States.
What does this mean to you? As landfill space becomes more scarce, alternative
means of disposing of such products of technology must be found. Citizens are less
willing to have used tires stored in their area (the NIMBY syndrome: Not In My
Backyard), but want the convenience and easier lifestyle brought on by such products
as tires. Unless other, more environmentally sound methods of disposal are found, tires
will continue to be placed in landfills or burned. Both methods are wasteful uses of a
potentially recyclable product.
Achieving sustainability: Landfilling is the most undesirable method of discarding
used tires. Burning, despite its drawbacks, can turn the rubber into energy via a process
called pyrolysis, which produces oil that can be used as fuel. Other uses of scrap tires
include using the rubber for rubberized asphalt paving, making athletic surfaces, and
producing new rubber products, such as storage bins and new tires. Another
sustainable solution is to create rubber tires that last a much longer time than the 60-
100 thousand miles they currently last. New technology could, perhaps, create a tire
that lasts as long as the car, which would reduce the need for buying new tires every
few years.
