Living Car Free - Bike tire recycling

Anyone know of options for recycling tires? A quick search of the forum and Google didn't help me find out more than I already knew about this...All I could find were programs to ship tires off and pay a small fee on top of shipping costs, which is not ideal, but still okay. Just wondering if there were better/easier/cheaper options out there?

Anyone know of options for recycling tires? A quick search of the forum and Google didn't help me find out more than I already knew about this...All I could find were programs to ship tires off and pay a small fee on top of shipping costs, which is not ideal, but still okay. Just wondering if there were better/easier/cheaper options out there?

I throw mine in the car tire dumpster at the local land fill. I assume they are being ground up and re-purposed for something. Maybe see if a local auto tire shop would allow you to toss them in with theirs.

Aaron:)

In Des Moines, you can bring car tires to a specified site and pay $2 for their disposal. I assume their disposal means they might be turned into the type of rubberized sand that you see occasionally in playgrounds (although I might prefer the real think...but..)

I assume you can do the same with bike tire. I actually have done none of the above. I have one car tire in my garage that should go to the recycle place and I've been filling its insides up with bike tires.

One re-purpose thing you might do with old tires is turn them into fenders. I tried this last winter and the outcome was not too good. However, I'm unable to find the BF thread with the instructions.

There should be other way you could re-purpose a tire.

There are a variety of ways they utilize the old ground up rubber, landscape mulch, recycled into playground mats, and in some areas it has been added to asphalt for parking lots. I am sure there are many other uses, just not aware of them. I also suspect the number disposed of in a single year runs into the tens of millions if not the hundred of millions. That is a lot of old tires to have to deal with.

Aaron:)

If they're free of holes a bike co-op might be able to use them.

The fender thing is an instructable too: http://www.instructables.com/id/Bike_fenders_from_recycled_bike_tires/

I throw mine in the car tire dumpster at the local land fill. I assume they are being ground up and re-purposed for something.Most of 'em (80+% IIRC) get ground up and used w/ conventional fuels in cement kilns.

If they're free of holes a bike co-op might be able to use them.

The fender thing is an instructable too: http://www.instructables.com/id/Bike_fenders_from_recycled_bike_tires/

Thanks for the link. I couldn't find it anywhere. There was a post in Bicycle Mechanics on the same topic.

One problem with the design is that you need a torch to put the thing together. This will be well out of reach of most DIYers. If you could find the mounting hardware cheaply it might work.

My effort was with a pair of gumwall tires and I can tell you it looked pretty awful.

I've seen a couple of fenders that were put together with wood veneer which looked much nicer. But the mounting hardware problem is that same with both and likely to be more costly (sadly) than a nice pair of SKS fenders from you LBS.

I was thinking if you had a wooden rowboat you could use old bike tires as a gunwale fender or protector. Also the posts on docks sometimes have these raised rubber ridges, a bike tire might work for that too. Haven't tried these.

In Des Moines, you can bring car tires to a specified site and pay $2 for their disposal. I assume their disposal means they might be turned into the type of rubberized sand that you see occasionally in playgrounds (although I might prefer the real think...but..)

Why do they charge for the tire disposal?

Why do they charge for the tire disposal?

Not sure, but they also charge for picking up yard waste which they turn into compost. Large appliances cost $35 and recycling electronic equipment like computers is $20. The deal on all these is that they can't be dumped in the landfill. Large appliances may contain PCBs, computers have all kind of toxic metals like mercury. Old tires also can't be sent to the landfill, so they have to process them somehow.