Rubber Reborn

From shoes to shooting ranges, sidewalks to swings, recycled rubber products showcase the innovation in manufacturers’ use of this scrap commodity.

By Ann C. Logue

Every day, new tires replace old ones on cars, buses, trucks, airplanes, and other conveyances. The United States generated 290 million scrap tires in 2003 alone, according to the most recent data available from the Rubber Manufacturers Association (Washington, D.C.). 
   Fortunately, the markets for recycled tire rubber have grown substantially over the past decade, to the point where nearly one-third of those tires become new products. Some uses are fairly well known: drainage in civil engineering projects, asphalt rubber, playground and athletic surfaces, mats and padding, and rubber mulch, to name a few. Innovative entrepreneurs have gone much further, however, to turn rubber from tires, inner tubes, and other automotive sources into hand-crafted or manufactured products that take advantage of rubber’s unique properties. These products work—they succeed because of their design and function, not necessarily because they use recycled content. But at the same time, they give a brief glimpse at the diverse markets for recycled rubber. 

Flip-Flops, Belts, and Frames
San Diego-based Splaff (www.splaff.com) turns tires and inner tubes into comfy and cute flip-flops, belts, and wallets sold in the United States, Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Getting the tires is easy, says Cliff Drill, the company’s president. “Sometimes I’ll find someone who’s in trouble with a local, state, or federal organization [for tire stockpiling], and they’ll pay me to take the tires off their hands.” What’s more difficult is using them. The tire tread is removed, cleaned, planed, and cut into soles, with each tire good for about six pairs of shoes. “Making shoes is kind of an art, and there’s a lot of variability in recycled product,” Drill says. “You need a lot of quality control.” Drill has developed new equipment to meet his manufacturing needs, and he recruits employees who are flexible enough to handle the changing materials.
   The flip-flops are constructed of reused rubber materials and new hemp fabric. The cushioning material sandwiched between the canvas footbed and the tire-tread sole is made from scrap rubber, and the straps are fashioned from bicycle inner tubes collected from local bike shops. The company also turns the inner tubes into belts, wallets, guitar straps, and trim on canvas bags. Drill has even been experimenting with using inner tubes as trim on canvas clothing.
   The company’s commitment to recycling led it to develop a new product line to use racecar-tire sidewalls to frame mirrors, dartboards, and tables. Drill says he hopes the popularity of auto racing will create demand for such products.

Handbags
Passchal (www.passchal.com), in Richmond, Va., is another company turning tire products into fashion accessories. It makes sturdy-yet-elegant handbags from the inner tubes of tires from industrial and farm equipment. Because the tubes are replaced more often than the tires, “there’s a never-ending supply,” says Ken Kobrick, a co-owner of the company. Each tube makes about six bags, depending on the bag and the type of tube. (An 8-foot-high inner tube from an earthmover generates more bags than a tube from a tractor, for instance.) The company has used 8 tons of inner tubes since it opened for business in 2004.
   The key to working with inner tubes, Kobrick says, is cleaning them to remove road dirt and the rubber smell; after that, the material cuts and handles just like leather. “We started out with all-rubber bags, but they weighed a lot and you couldn’t get color choices,” Kobrick says. Now the bags have a rubber exterior, a faux leather or nylon lining, and faux leather, hemp, or leather trim. 
   “We’re trying to make a high-end, fashionable product,” Kobrick says. Retail prices range from $64 for a CD holder to $250 for a messenger bag. The bags are available in clothing boutiques, museum stores, and at least one over-the-road truck stop: It turns out that truckers are delighted to find an elegant gift for a wife, girlfriend, or daughter that reflects life on the road.

Tire Swings
Kids have been swinging on old tires hanging from tree limbs probably since Charles Goodyear invented vulcanization. But those old-fashioned swings were neither comfortable nor attractive, unlike the fanciful horse, dragon, and airplane swings made by Wildlife Creations of Phillipsburg, N.J. (800/ 690-6028). 
   “A tire always fascinated me,” says company founder Patrick Palumbo, a sculptor. “As an artist, I’d look at one and try to figure out what to do with it.” In 1976, he turned an old tire into a horse-shaped swing and entered it into an art show. He walked away with both first place and orders for 50 more swings. 
   In 1993, Palumbo turned the tire-swing sideline into a serious business that has grown smartly. The company makes more than 20 different designs, which it sells through big-box retailers and small boutiques around the world. The automobile tires come from salvage yards and tire stores. “We look for tires that are worn down so that we can turn them inside out,” Palumbo says. The designs use about 80 percent of each tire. He’s had to change his production methods to keep up with changes in tire technology: The company’s artisans prefer bias tires, but they now can work with steel-belted tires, too. 
   Despite their value as sculpture, “I make these especially for kids,” says Palumbo. To convince skeptical parents that reused tires are a clean, safe material, he had the swings certified to meet the American Society for Testing and Materials’ home playground equipment safety standards. “Here’s an old, rotten tire that everyone shrugged off,” Palumbo says with satisfaction. “Now they buy it in a boutique shop.”

Roofing Materials
EcoStar/Carlisle (www.premiumroofs.com) of Vernon Hills, Ill., uses a composite of recycled rubber and plastics, including those from automotive radiator hoses and door seals (but not necessarily tires), to make roofing shingles. The shingles look like slate or shake but cost less and last longer. EcoStar products, some of which are made from 100-percent recycled materials, are warranted to last for 50 years when installed by a certified roofing company, an EcoStar spokeswoman said. They’ve proven popular with homeowners who want the look of traditional materials without the cost or the weight. Government agencies like both the functionality and the recycled content, and the EcoStar shingles have met historic preservation guidelines for federal government projects in Washington, D.C.

Sidewalks
Concrete sidewalks can be a problem. Besides their contribution to skinned knees, they can block tree roots, and they don’t last all that long—as any city resident who gets a sidewalk-repair notice can tell you. Rubbersidewalks (www.rubbersidewalks.com) of Gardena, Calif., has an alternative: rubber sidewalks. 
   Rubbersidewalks uses crumb from shredded tires, which is pressed into pavers measuring 5 feet square. Each square foot of paver contains one whole tire’s worth of rubber. The product accommodates tree root development, resulting in fewer cracked sidewalks and more healthy trees in a neighborhood. And many people like the environmental benefits of using rubber scrap. Folks can relate to rubber sidewalks, says company president Lindsay Smith, because everyone has tires. “People are very eager to contribute to the recycling effort,” she says.
   The pavers have demonstrated stability in extreme heat; they are being tested in cities that also have periods of extreme cold, with positive initial results. The sidewalks have one other unusual advantage: They can be reset after severe earthquakes, unlike concrete, which often is damaged so badly that it must be torn out and replaced. 
   Smith says 60 cities are using Rubbersidewalks’ pavers right now. The material is currently shipped from California, which can make it more expensive than concrete, but Smith has plans to license manufacturers around the country. “To be the most cost-effective, you want to use regional tires, produce regionally, and ship locally,” she says. “The good thing is, you can get tires anywhere.”

Marine Fenders
A marine fender is a piece of rubber that keeps a ship from being damaged when it bumps into a tugboat or a dock. These products are huge: The average fender that Seattle’s Schuyler Rubber (www.schuylerrubber.com) sells weighs 10,000 pounds, almost all of which is rubber from recycled tires. “They’re junk bus and truck tires that can’t be recapped,” says Dennis Kerber, the company’s owner. “We get them from local tire stores.” The company goes through about 8,000 tires a month, with almost the entire tire used in making the fenders’ laminated rubber. 
   Using recycled material saves the company money and allows it to keep its prices stable: The price of worn tires doesn’t vary with oil prices the way that virgin rubber prices do. Schuyler Rubber has been recycling tires since its founding in 1950. But Kerber says his customers care about performance, not the rubber source. Shipyard owners and tugboat operators want effective fenders that will survive years of hard use. The company has patented many of its designs, and it is introducing new models to meet new ship designs and shipping needs. “There are continuing needs for fenders that can absorb more energy,” he says. 

Erosion Control Barriers
On many construction sites, crews use sandbags to hold back debris and protect drainage systems. The sandbags often break, dumping sand into the very drains they’re supposed to protect. That problem led Tim Horan to think up a better method of erosion control, one that would have the added benefit of being made with a recyclable material. He and a partner formed Eco-Blok (www.eco-blok.com), based in Newbury Park, Calif., to make alternative barriers out of recycled tires. Horan estimates the company has used 50,000 to 70,000 scrap tires, about two per block, since its 2001 launch.
   The company purchases the scrap tire feedstock from processing companies. Users can configure the blocks to create almost any shape of barrier. They’ve proven popular with several municipalities across the country. In fact, in two projects, Eco-Blok has taken over a municipality’s tire pile and turned it into barriers that the community government could use. The product also is popular with homebuilders such as Pulte, Neumann Homes, and Sherwood Construction. 

Traffic Drums
Tire rubber also can substitute for sandbags in holding down the ubiquitous orange-and-white traffic-control barrel. Cleveland’s Plastic Safety Systems (www.plasticsafety.com) holds the patent on a rubber ballast ring made of sidewalls reclaimed from old truck tires. The tire collar, which slides over the barrel to hold it down, is practically indestructible—an important consideration for equipment that’s out in all sorts of weather and in the path of cars and trucks. The drums “can see some harsh environments,” says Bill Jamieson, the company’s marketing manager. 
   Using sidewalls from scrap processors and retreaders, PSS manufactures its own tire collars as well as other traffic control devices with recycled rubber bases. It also licenses its ballast design to other manufacturers. The innovation was motivated less by a desire to recycle than by sheer practicality. “It was an endeavor to find ballast without resorting to traditional sandbags,” Jamieson says. Sandbags are difficult and more labor-intensive for safety crews to handle, they create a big mess when they break, and their lumpy shape can pose a road hazard compared with the tire collar. “The collar stacks better and faster and is more easily installed,” he says. 

Shooting Ranges and Shoot Houses
Military and law enforcement units need to practice their shooting. Range Systems (www.shootingrangeproducts. com) of New Hope, Minn., makes shooting range panels and blocks out of recycled rubber, which prevents bullets from ricocheting. The rubber is molded into blocks used at the end of a target range or applied to steel panels that form the walls of mock buildings used in tactical training. Each block can absorb more than 5,000 rounds of ammunition. The nearest substitute, plywood, can handle about 5 percent of that.
   “When our customers are looking to solve a problem with bullet containment, they like the way this performs,” says Mitch Petrie, a company director. Some buyers also like the recycled content, he says. “A lot of our military customers are interested in a zero net gain of hazardous materials.” And they like the idea that lead ammunition can be removed from the rubber so that both materials can be recycled, which is not possible with plywood. 
   The company prefers to use buffings from airline tire retreads as source material because they don’t have steel belts, but it can process other types of tires as well. “It’s not an original idea to make things out of recycled rubber,” Petrie says, “but it’s a good idea.”

Railroad Grade Crossings
Where a railroad track crosses a roadway, a grade crossing protects the track while smoothing out the road service. Rail-Way Inc. (www. rail-wayinc.com), headquartered in Cascade, Iowa, makes grade crossings from recycled rubber encased in virgin rubber. The reclaimed material comes from the rubber buffed off tires in the retreading process. Rail-Way combines the buffings with binding materials, envelops the product in new rubber, and then heats and molds it to meet product specifications. 
   Mike Haas, Rail-Way’s president, estimates that about 90 percent of each rubber grade crossing is made with recycled rubber. This reduces the company’s manufacturing costs—and the costs to the railroads and municipalities that buy them. 
   Haas says rubber crossings are an excellent alternative to concrete crossings, which the company also makes, especially in parts of the United States and Canada where the weather fluctuates significantly during the year. “Rubber will expand and contract with the temperature,” he says. “Rubber is also impervious to certain chemicals and oils,” he adds, an important consideration for crossings involving freight lines and major highways.
   Coming Soon: Oil Absorbents Rubber is a hydrocarbon, so it attracts other hydrocarbons, like oil. That property has been behind the research and development work at New York’s Ecser Holding Corp. (www.ecser.net), a company that holds a patent on rubber devulcanization.
   When used rubber is devulcanized, it absorbs oil without dissolving into it. Ecser has created a recycled rubber product called SpillCure that’s designed to absorb oil spills. The oil can be wrung out of the absorbent so that both oil and rubber can be re-used. “We’re aiming for a pollution solution,” says company owner Moses Gutman. He notes that the product has other potential applications, including time-release applications of pesticides or nutrients.
   Though SpillCure won’t be on the market until 2007, it’s another example of the ongoing creativity and innovation occurring in the recycled rubber market. 

Ann C. Logue is a writer based in Chicago.