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Learning to Appreciate Recycling: Look at All the Energy That Goes Into Remolding Tires
By Rain Noe - Aug 01, 2013
In an earlier post, I commented on how Japanese children at the school where I worked were taught to pitch in with recycling. But I failed to mention a rather strange counterpoint, emblematic of that country's bewildering contradictions: One day a horrific smell wafted over the campus. I went outside to investigate, and discovered that a farmer in the lot adjacent to the school was burning an enormous pile of tires. The wind carried the vile, black smoke all over the school and the playing grounds. I asked a teacher about this and he shrugged. "There is no place to put them," he said.
I've since learned tires can of course be re-molded and re-treaded. But I had no idea how labor- and energy-intensive it was until I saw this video. Those of you who are into molding will enjoy seeing how the mold comes apart/together around 3:15. I also dug watching how they remove the flashing, and that inflatable thingy that serves as the mold's core:
The amount of man-hours that goes into each tire, not to mention the one-hour-plus molding time, is staggering. But what I found most surprising was that despite all of that energy burned, re-molding is still 30 to 60% cheaper than creating the tire from scratch.
Rain Noe
Rain Noe is a writer and industrial designer based in New York City.
2 Comments
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That's why re-use is better than recycling if possible. That's what drove me to design ReTyre seating ( www.cmid.co.nz ) made from tyres with no processing to the tyre. That and disaster revival after the Christchurch Earthquakes (New Zealand).!Report as spam
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Why surprised? New tyre production is tremendously energy consuming, it's the same process as you see here, only you have process the raw material and put a woven belt of steel in the middle of it. Re-moulds have had a terrible reputation in the past (rightly so) companies like Insa Turbo in Spain have revolutionised the technology . They are as safe as buying a new tyre now and much safer than part worns. This is the only bit of recycling I'm truly convinced by! Thanks, Mike!Report as spam
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