Talk:Tire recycling

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Shoshucsd. Peer reviewers: Shoshucsd.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 11:25, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Are they fully recyclable?
That is to say, is it possible to grind them up or make pellets out of used / worn out tires, and then use these pellets for anything, including making new tires? If so, could a brand new tire be made wholly out of recycled tires (or rubber, for that matter)? 109.93.231.13 (talk) 20:30, 16 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I assume that there are restrictions on what can be done with any recycled material, the same as in paper and plastic. The process I saw was that the tires are shredded and the main three materials separated (rubber, textile, steel) using a filtering process. The rubber can be ground into pellets of different sizes and used to make certain products including replacing sand in playgrounds with a rubber surface, interlocking bricks, and perhaps to retread truck tires. Coloured rubber pellets are added to create different surfaces. --Shuki (talk) 22:35, 17 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Finely-ground rubber dust can be used as a filler for new rubber products.AlexPlante (talk) 15:45, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Almost anything can be "fully recycled" but at what cost? The real question is can it be done profitably? Actually it would be much easier if they found a way to make tires without steel belts and beads. The steel causes most of the problems. 66.159.206.129 (talk) 03:09, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

The statement that "Nonetheless more than half of used tires are simply burned for their fuel value" is incomplete and misleading. The cited reference (which is now 12 years old, and perhaps of limited relevance) states "More than half of the scrap is burned for its fuel value for generation of electricity and as a component in cement production" (my emphasis.) It goes on to refer to its use in asphalt. I'm not sure how to amend the article without more detailed (and up to date) data, but saying, in effect that half the used tires just get burned is off the mark.ExpatSalopian (talk) 17:45, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
 * First of all, 12 year old data is doing pretty good for Wikipedia on these technical subjects. Few readers or commenters contribute decent sources.  Second, the data seem to be supported by other sources, which I have added.  Even in a sophisticated economy like Germany, about 55% are burnt.  You can imagine the situation in other countries...  It is a severe problem. --Smokefoot (talk) 22:57, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Advertising one company
For some time, an editor, using a number of different IP addresses, has been trying to add a reference to an article referring to one particular rubber recycling company to this article, and also to various others including Mulch, Recycling, and Waste management. It would be messy if Waste management included a list of all the companies in the worldwide waste management business, and I can't see why one company should be singled out for this advertising privilege. To me, this looks like blatant attempts at advertising. Is there any reason why one particular company's article should be included? One such incarnation of the spammer is 198.77.206.228, whose was a spam posting and who has continued spam for two causes ever since. - David Biddulph (talk) 04:52, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I think that this is an attempt at SEO, I thought that using WP doesn't work anymore, am I misinformed?--Shmaltz (talk) 03:31, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
 * FYI, I have brought the article on that particular rubber company to AFD. - MrOllie (talk) 16:41, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 1 one external link on Tire recycling. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20100305071346/http://www.rma.org:80/scrap%5Ftires/scrap%5Ftire%5Fmarkets/scrap%5Ftire%5Fcharacteristics/ to http://www.rma.org/scrap_tires/scrap_tire_markets/scrap_tire_characteristics

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 16:37, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Problems in the Opening Paragraph
The lines "Nonetheless more than half of used tires are simply burned for their fuel value.[2] Even in advanced countries like Germany, 55% are estimated to be burnt for fuel." hold a bias against using tires as a source of fuel. Those lines should be taken out of the opening paragraph and a new section could be added comparing the pros and cons of the different end uses of tires. Also new more relevant data should be found about the number of tires discarded annually in this sentence "It is estimated that 259 million tires are discarded annually (data is for the 1980s and 1990s).[1]". A simple search on the rubber manufactures of America's website shows that in 2015 the US only had 67 million tires left in stockpiles. I'm sure the world wide data could easily be found and used to update the statistics to be more relevant. The sentence also needs to be made more clear if those are statistics about tires that are illegally discarded or if that statistic accounts for both legal and illegal discarding of tires. Shoshucsd (talk) 22:24, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the effort. My concerns are that the article is still advocating or cheerleading for an outcome sought by well intentioned editors vs dispassionately describing the situation.  The other smaller concern is that the article, like many in Wikipedia, treats US preferentially.

A specific question is that the revision "Advancing technology, such as tire pyrolysis and vulcanization" Pyrolysis does the cited article mean recycling the chemicals that make up tires. Would be very surprising if this can be done well as polyisoprene and synthetic styrene-butadiene do not crack well (do not revert to monomers upon heating). And what does vulcanization have to do with the advancing technologies. Vulcanization is the process that renders polyisoprene or related polymers useful mechanically and it is not clear why anyone would want to further cross-link the material.

thanks for leaving the note and starting the discussion. --Smokefoot (talk) 14:05, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Our job is not to paint a picture of the world we wish for, but of the world as it is. Tire recycling is very challenging. --Smokefoot (talk) 18:14, 1 October 2017 (UTC)