Tire recycling
form of recycling
Tire recycling, or rubber recycling, is the process of recycling waste tires that are no longer suitable for use on vehicles due to wear or irreparable damage. These tires are a challenging source of waste, due to the large volume produced, the durability of the tires, and the components in the tire that are ecologically problematic.
Because tires are highly durable and non-biodegradable, they can consume valuable space in landfills. If waste tires are improperly managed they may cause rubber pollution. In 1990, it was estimated that over 1 billion scrap tires were in stockpiles in the United States. As of 2015, only 67 million tires remain in stockpiles. From 1994 to 2010, the European Union increased the amount of tires recycled from 25% of annual discards to nearly 95%, with roughly half of the end-of-life tires used for energy, mostly in cement manufacturing.
Pyrolysis and devulcanization could facilitate recycling. Aside from use as fuel, the main end use for tires remains ground crumb rubber. In 2017, 13% of U.S. tires removed from their primary use were sold in the used tire market.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3595337. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1990, 2015, 1994 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tire recycling” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.