Last year, it was recorded by Earth first that more than 1.3 billion tires were sold and that 75% of these purchases were to replace old worn out tires. That means that over one billion tires a year are being thrown away as waste. Now to stop this from having a huge environmental impact recycled tires are being used in a variety of innovative ways.

 

Alternative To Fossil Fuels

With earth’s fossil fuels on an ever decreasing decline tire derived fuel is fast becoming a viable fossil fuel substitute, especially in large furnaces. When you look at the global picture, one tire is thrown away by each person every year. Now that’s billions of people, which equates to billions of wasted tires. Using these tires as fossil fuel is just one way these discarded tires can be utilized, so why waste a single one?

Earthships

For those of you who want to take being environmentally friendly to the extreme, you should consider living in an earth ship! These are the ultimate environmentally friendly pods (houses) that are also very energy efficient. What have they got to do with recycled tires? Well the walls are made from discarded tires, packed with compact earth and used as bricks of the structure. If you’d rather just stick to your own house, there is another innovative way that you can use recycled tires in your own garden.

Rubber Mulch

Don’t worry we are not talking about having whole tires in your garden but small granules of shredded tires that can be used as landscape mulch. Not only does this landscape rubber mulch look really good (you can get it in a variety of colors to suit your needs) but it actually protects the soil from extreme heat and cold and lets the water drain through naturally without absorbing it. Use of this rubber mulch also reduces weed growth and deters insect manifestations.

So next time you are thinking what to do with an old, worn out tire – don’t even consider dumping it, instead go and get it recycled and you will be helping the earth become a greener planet.

To discover more about the benefits of rubber mulch – go here Rubber Recycle.

 

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 16th, 2007 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Environment, Mulch, Recycle. 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.