Some interesting figures on the destination of old tyres in Australia have been divulged today on the ACCC website as part of the re-confirming of the status of industry-supported Australian Tyre Stewardship Australia.
How to ‘deconstruct’ a three and half tonne tyre
The development of Australian world first technology to recycle end of life car and truck tyres has been a story in itself, but that is nothing compared with working out the logistics of how to handle those extra-large ‘off the road’ tyres (OTRs) used by heavy duty mining dump trucks, large agricultural tractors and road making equipment.
As an incentive, the recycling rewards are tantalising because using the Green Distillation Technology a tyre that weighs 3.5 tonnes will yield 1500 litres of oil, 1.5 tonnes of carbon, as well as the steel reinforcing which will go back to the tyre manufacturer for reuse.
Returnable bins make old tyres much easier to handle
As well as being a major environmental problem, end-of-life tyres are difficult to handle from both a storage and transport point of view.
So a simple and clever idea based of a returnable bin is solving what has been a transport and logistics nightmare in the past for council tips as well as tyre retailers, transport companies and tyre collectors.
The returnable bins have been developed by waste tyre collector JLW Services of Cootamundra, a business that operates throughout New South Wales and North Western Australia and has plans to expand nationwide.
The bins come in 50m3, 38m3, 25m3, 18.5m3, 10.5m3 sizes and comprise of a heavy duty welded cage which is simply dropped off at the tyre retailer, transport depot, mine site or council tip. The end-of-life tyres are placed in the bin and when it is full it is collected and a new bin dropped off. The capacity that can be handled in the bins range from 600 mixed car and four wheel drive tyres for the 50m3 size down to 320 for the 25m3, while the 10.2m3 is designed for waste transfer stations and motorcycle shops.
