Your recycling bin is not always used just for pieces of paper, tins and plastic. A large number of products can be recycled and one particular item which you may not even think could be recycled is tyres.

Now you wouldn’t necessarily place your wasted tyres into your recycling bin, but they can be recycled all the same. You may be aware that tyres have recently been banned from landfill sites because of their effect on the environment. That move has now led to a large tyre recycling plant being opened in Port Talbot in South Wales.

Why Recycle Tyres?

When the ban was placed on shredded and whole tyres being placed into landfill sites, people started to wonder where on earth they would put their old tyres once they were worn out. Many people have resorted to leaving them in their gardens or in their garages and obviously this is not an ideal solution. As tyres are made from strong rubber, it takes years for them to disintegrate, hence the reason they have been banned from landfill sites.

So, by using a recycling bin to keep your tyres in, you can now get in contact with a tyre recycling company such as the one in South Wales. They will then be able to arrange something with you or tell you where you can send the tyres if need be and they will then go into the recycling process.

How Are Tyres Recycled?

So what happens to the tyres once they leave your recycling bin? Well generally they need to go to a plant to be shredded. There are roughly 50 million waste tyres that need to be dealt with in the UK and obviously that is an extraordinary amount of tyres! So the job in hand is an extremely big one and generally one of the main plants involved in the shredding process is located in Breighton which is near Selby.

Once the tyres go to the plant in South Wales, they are frozen, covered with liquid nitrogen and shattered and screened before they are treated with magnets. These magnets are used to separate it into really high quality metal, fibre and crumbs.

Now the metal that is recycled from the tyres tends to go to scrap heaps. The crumbs of rubber are usually sent off to a company knows as “FieldTurf” which uses the crumbs for artificial sports surfaces. There are also plans to start using the recycled crumbs instead of virgin rubber as that can cost around £1,000 for a tonne of it and obviously recycled crumb would cost a lot less.

So as you can see, when the tyres leave your recycling bin, they have to go through a fairly lengthy process before they can be used again. So if you have been wondering what you can do with your wasted tyres, then now you know that they can easily be recycled. You just need to ensure that you keep a recycling bin for any tyres you may have and contact an appropriate company straight away to see if you can get them recycled.

Editors’ notes:
NowRecycle.co.uk is a trading style of Plastic Omnium Systems Ltd - a European market leader in waste containment solutions that provides a wide range of waste containers and services including wheeled bins, litter bins, banks, composters and sacks. It is part of the International Plastic Omnium Group, a world leader in contract waste container solutions with worldwide sales of more than £1.8 billion. It employs over 9,000 people in 25 countries, across four continents, in manufacturing and service solutions for the automotive, environment and performance plastic products.
Press Contact: Simon Dutta, N European Marketing Director, Plastic Omnium Urban Systems Ltd
Telephone: 01952 582 583

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 12:13 pm and is filed under Recycling Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.