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BRAVE AI:

For massive amounts of old tires, the most effective solution is to engage commercial tire recycling or disposal services that can handle bulk volumes, such as professional junk removal companies or specialized recycling facilities.

These services shred tires into crumb rubber for use in playground surfacing, athletic tracks, rubberized asphalt, and landscaping mulch, or convert them into tire-derived fuel (TDF) for industrial energy recovery.

Key options for large-scale tire management include:

Commercial Recycling Partnerships: Contact tire retailers, auto shops, or municipal waste departments to establish bulk drop-off or pickup schedules, often for a per-tire fee.

Specialized Collection Events: Utilize local government-organized collection days for scrap tires, which are often free or low-cost and designed to reduce illegal dumping.

Professional Removal Services: Hire junk removal companies that offer bulk tire removal and ensure eco-friendly recycling at certified facilities.

Donation or Resale: If tires are in good condition, consider selling them on marketplaces or donating to nonprofits, vocational schools, or community groups for educational or repair use.

On-Site Repurposing: For manageable quantities, use tires for erosion control, artificial reefs, garden planters (non-edible), or playground structures like swings and climbing walls.

Avoid landfilling or burning tires, as they are non-biodegradable, pose fire hazards, and can leach toxic chemicals into soil and water.

>>crumb rubber for use in playground surfacing

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You silly eco liberals with your lacking of complete thought process.

Yes, y’all really did do that and caused minor to severe injuries to kids cut up by the steel in the tire ‘crumbs’..

Then y’all tried to pass off the ground up tires as landscape mulch after painting them what ever color you like bought suckers would buy.

Having beds of pretty painted rubber embedded with sharp strands of steel was/is a danger for man/child/animal.

We had a pretty big tire recycler here, but they went out of business. They cited the high cost and upkeep of the machines that were used to recycle steel belted tires.(could have just been poor management, I don’t know) And steel belted tires are a very high percentage of the market now. Burning any quantity of them will get you a citation here in my area of Texas, you can use one or two to ignite a brush pile, but if you set a bunch of them ablaze by themselves, you’ll get ticketed. Some people wait until a moonless night and torch them, though.

Earth filled tires can make good retaining walls. Shredded rubber can also be incorporated into asphalt concrete, thus improving road pavement flexibility without cracking.

From Brave AI:

Experiments incorporating shredded tires into asphalt concrete have generally resulted in superior pavement performance compared to conventional mixes, particularly in resistance to cracking, rutting, and UV degradation. Early attempts using larger rubber particles in hot mix asphalt suffered from mix design flaws and insufficient binder, leading to elevated failure rates, but later studies using finer crumb rubber in asphalt binders showed that rubber-modified pavements performed at least as well as standard hot mix asphalt.

Specific benefits identified in research include:

Enhanced Durability: Pavements using recycled asphalt concrete (RAC) showed a much slower progress of distresses than structurally equivalent dense-graded asphalt concrete. UV Protection: Asphalt with 18–22% crumb rubber exhibited half the UV damage of regular asphalt, potentially doubling the surface lifespan by acting as a sunscreen against aging. Flexibility and Fatigue Resistance: Rubber-modified asphalt improves resistance to traffic loads and fatigue, with Texas DOT studies noting excellent performance in porous friction courses.

While these results are promising, initial challenges regarding cost and the need for strict quality control systems were significant hurdles that had to be overcome to achieve field performance equal to or better than conventional materials.

In a nation full of crumbling roads, perhaps we should get cracking on more shredding equipment. It looks like the long-term costs will be in trucking and mixing.