Tire recycling
 

My family is about to restore a couple garage finds ('79 Schwinn Collegiate Sport 10, '92 Bianchi Advantage) so they can be properly rideable.

My question: Is bicycle tire recycling something that is done by anyone?

The last time I tried to do this I asked my local bike shops and was told they had no idea and just toss theirs. I know I can recycle car tires at several places locally but I know car tires are structured differently so I do not know if that is an issue. So any thoughts on the matter or just to the trash can with them?

Just about every LBS I've worked in (and the one I owned) found that they would have to pay a rubber recycler to accept bike tires. Not economically viable. Andy.

The LBS I work at collects the tires and hauls them out to the landfill occasionally. The landfill has a big dumpster of rubber; I believe they sell it by the ton to recyclers.

Like Andy says, tire recycling costs money. That's why the auto tire shops charge you that "tire disposal fee" even if you volunteer to haul your old tires away. I imagine it is to discourage you from dumping your tires illegally. Although truckers seem to able to leave their tires strewn all over the highway.

Tires are made of 3 materials, the rubber, cloth plies of various materials such as nylon or polyester, and beads, typically made of steel or kevlar. It's very difficult and expensive to recover these materials for recycling. Even auto tires which have more to be salvaged, are often not recycled for raw material, but are simply repurposed for all sorts of odd jobs.

Unfortunately, bike tires don't have enough material to warrant the cost of separation, and there's not any decent repurpose applications so bike tires end up in landfills, regardless of any well intentioned detours past the recycling center.

There is a local tire and tube recycling collective here. Check with different clubs and LBSs in your area. There might be something similar.

Hayward field, In Eugene, On U of O campus, where the Olympic trials will be held, has a track surface of shredded rubber
from Tires and Old Running shoes.

Tire recycling consists of shredding a tire, sucking out the steel and sorting the pieces to size. I have never heard of anyone refusing a bicycle tire at a recycling place. You could also be a bit sneaky and put the smaller carcass inside a car tire when you go to dispose of them. I'll admit I did it with motorcycle tires, since my recycler has a 12 tire limit per year.

-SP

Auto tires are recycled into paving material. I would think that bicycle tires would be as suitable, but you would have to find who's picking them up and take the tires to them, perhaps pay a fee. I just searched 'recycling bicycle tires' on duckduckgo and found useful responses.

My local Performance Bike accepts (bike) tires and tubes for recycling.

The LBS I work takes tires and tubes to a local tire shop free of charge. Just ask around different tire shops, I'm sure theres one that will take em for free.

I'm all for recyclling but have my limits. The one or two bike tires I go through in a year just go in the trash.

The county I live in MD, has a very large recycling center. I take the tires there, or to my LBS whom would take the tires to this center themselves.

Thank you all for your advice.

I do live in a new area now and haven't checked out my local options but living in So Cal and checking all my LBS within 10 miles and getting no positive response I gave up then. Now, thanks to you, I'm going to try again.

We don't want tires buried in the ground. I figured I would be reading more environmental friendly/conscious answers on a biking forum :(


The auto tire center down the street took a tire I found for $3. Is three dollars breaking the bank for some of you to not mistreat Earth?

You don't get it. Odds are you paid $3.00 for a longer trip to the dump. When the auto shop sends that tire to the recycling center along with the auto tires, the folks at the center will tag it as not suitable for recycling and send it off with the other similar non-salvageable stuff.

The sad simple truth, as that not everything sent for recycling gets recycled.

yes

We recycled the cardboard boxes but not tires...

I just throw the tires into the recycling bin and let the sorters at Western Waste sort for what's applicable.

Brad

This is irresponsible. Sorting through recyclables costs them money. In Scandinavian countries people have as many as 16 different recycling bins; there are fines for putting the wrong thing in a bin and for throwing recyclables in the trash. So find out whether Western Waste accepts tires. Recycling is very close to being unprofitable; a little work by us can save them a lot.

The most effective policy to promote recycling is to charge a fee at the time of purchase, as happens with auto batteries and auto tires in California. Use the fee to fund recycling, pay it back when one brings a tire in. This way you pay only once or you fund scavengers who fetch them out of the trash. I scavenged construction sites for pop & beer bottles when I was a kid (the '50s) for the 2 cents' deposit. We're more loss-averse than bonus-incentivized; the increase in volume would make recycling more efficient.

The system in use in my area only has one bin, the sorters are a necessary tooth on the recycling cog. The Scandinavian system suggests seventeen different groups of sorters to at least levy fines?

Brad

The more stuff they have to remove the more work they have to do, the more employees Western Waste needs to hire, the more you pay to recycle, the less all the people who have to pay like it.

It suggests fewer sorters because the stuff's pre-sorted. The people who pick up recycling detect mis-sorting. I mentioned it as a sign of how serious Scandinavians are.

We used to pre-sort here, but that was unpopular. You can figure out what Western Waste recycles and pre-discard what it can't, saving them the labor, the citizens the cost, all with no additional discard-labor on your part.

http://pearlandtx.gov/departments/di...ices/recycling

a lot of people are a bad combination of stupid and lazy.

residents here whined about having to sort items, so the city went to single-stream recycling. you can now throw paper, glass, alum, steel, any plastic with a triangle, and cardboard in a 90-gal bin that gets curbside pickup twice a month.

easy, right...?

but you routinely see dimwits just use them as garbage cans and put everything from car batteries to dirty diapers in them. the recycling center will reject an entire truckload of material if it exceeds a certain percentage of non-recyclables...thus defeating the purpose of trying minimize what goes to the landfill.