Is it feasible to develop a circular economy with waste tires?

More than 1 billion car tires reach the end of their service life every year around the world, and how to deal with the piles of waste tires has become a growing headache for the world. From the raw materials, production, transportation, etc. of tires to the hands of consumers, there is a potential risk of polluting the environment.

01 There is an opportunity, but it is difficult
The circular economy advocated now is also very important in the field of tires, such as recyclable recycled materials, reducing the pollution and resource waste caused by tires. But these efforts can only alleviate the outstanding waste tire problem to a certain extent.

Of course, it can also be considered from the product itself, such as redesigning tires and finding new sources of rubber raw materials. But the most important thing is how to effectively recycle waste tires.

Recycling waste tires has always been a difficult problem to solve due to the complex composition of tires. The development of the tire recycling industry has not been very good. Every year, more than 1 billion waste tires have nowhere to go. Most of the waste tires can only be thrown into landfills or discarded at will.

The pollution components of tires will affect animals and humans along with land, rivers, atmosphere, etc. Ordinary tires contain more than 400 chemicals and compounds, and the problem cannot be quickly solved by simple methods.

02The toxicity of tires cannot be underestimated
The main raw material of tires is rubber. About 70% of the world's natural rubber ends up in car tires, most of which comes from tropical countries such as Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. But natural rubber is only one component in modern tires.

Like cars, tires are composite products, made of steel and hundreds of chemicals and compounds that give them durability and strength. However, this poses a huge challenge to the decomposition and recycling of waste tires, and the worn tire powder on the road is also one of the factors that pollute the environment.

Tires contain toxic substances, for example: a tire additive called 6PPD is considered particularly noteworthy. The mass death of cod in the Pacific Northwest of the United States is related to chemical pollution in the form of this antioxidant. 6PPD will be converted into 6PPD quinone, a highly toxic chemical. It is very deadly to aquatic species, which is a great damage to the marine ecology.

The existing methods of treating waste tires cannot solve the problem of pollution. Landfilling tires will only pollute land and water sources. Incineration will cause polluted gases to evaporate into the air. Open-air burning may release carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter and other compounds. It poses a threat to human health.

03 Waste tires are receiving attention
Related agencies have found that since 2022, the number of waste tire recycling-related enterprises in at least 8 provinces has exceeded 300. As the prices of various raw materials continue to rise, the recycling products of waste tires are attracting attention from all walks of life around the world.

With the upgrading of pyrolysis technology, the recycling rate of waste tires has been significantly improved. Its pyrolysis products can be used to meet part of the needs of steel mills, fuel plants and plastic products companies, driving the continuous increase in corporate sales and profits.

It is reported that in previous years, the sales of waste tire plants with a processing scale of less than 100,000 tons could reach 100 million yuan; and with the expansion of project scale and the increase in output value, it is expected that the annual output value of large-scale recycling projects will exceed 10 billion yuan in the near future.