Tyres: When we change them where they end up?

Organizations clean the seabeds and haul vehicles! They clean up municipalities and districts the streams to prevent flooding and among the debris will find a pile of tires. CORVERSE In fields, in plots within the poles, next to provincial vulkanizators, everywhere you will find thrown tires, not by themselves, but by human hand. What leads man to take such actions and especially the Greek who is a citizen of a developed country, with all the objections around the word developed, is worthy of investigation. DEPENDENCE We still throw debris, garbage of all kinds and ignore whether these are recycled, whether any of them are reused and in any case we ignore that we are polluting the environment. However, some people use old tires instead of pots to plant plants and flowers, while stacks of tyres are used as a protective body in street bars where car racing takes place. Following a recent article on the abandonment of vehicles, which should reasonably be recycled, I come back with a similar issue about tyres, a synthetic product that if you abandon it in nature, in the environment, I do not know how many thousand years it may take until it breaks down. What I know is what I have seen for years now visiting tyre factories, which I have seen where the tyres end after the end of their lives, because everything has an end. I asked for the help of George Mavria, Director-General of Ecoelastika, the Eco-Management Company. In response to my questions, George Mavroias points out that “from 2004 , which operates Ecoelastika, until the end of 2024 approximately 790,000 tonnes of end-of-life tyres of all categories managed by Ecoelastika have been collected. Of these quantities 61% were recycled and 39% were used for energy utilization. Re-use is about 1%. According to George Mavria, the rate of rising or decreasing the collected waste tyres, each year, is consistent with the increase or decrease in the market of new tyres. In recent years, except for the year of covid (in 2020) and earlier in the years of the crisis, which we had a decrease, generally the rate of change in the withdrawn tyres is growing every year, with growth rates ranging from 0.5% to 8% each year. Also, the increase in the fleet of vehicles, and in particular the increase in the sales of electric vehicles leads to an additional increase in retired waste tyres. Ecoelastika collects the useless tyres from around 3,000 vulcanizators and workshops throughout the country, from vehicle solvents and from tyre holders (city cars, construction sites, etc.). In my question about the fact that a significant volume of abandoned tyres has been observed in vulkanizator, George Mavroyas points out that “normally useless tyres should be collected from vulkanizater within 3 working days of the day given to Ecoelastika a relevant order for collection, and if the tyres are over a minimum quantity (indicative: 60 passenger tyres per point of collection). In such cases of delays, there are usually problems related to the capacity of the tyre processing and recycling plants operating in Greece.” The big question is what are recycled tyres used for. And here’s the answer from the Director-General of Ecoelastica: “Useful tyres pass through various stages of mechanical processing and separation of materials that make up them in recycling sites . Of these is produced as a main product the tyre trim of various granulometres, which is a raw material for the production of a range of products, such as artificial turf land, rubber safety tiles placed in playgrounds, schools, gymnasiums and provide safety during the fall, a range of rubber-based materials used to provide insulating or anti-dental properties to special structures. Co-products of the production process of tyre processing are linens commonly used for energy utilization in cement industries and wires (metals) recycled, such as metal scrap. Also 10% of the withdrawn tyres are cut into dimensions of 10 – 20 million and exported for energy use to energy-intensive industries abroad or for the production of trim in third countries (except the EU). Also, a 5% of the collected tyres are driven directly (full tyres) to the Greek cement industry for co-incineration (energy utilisation). Is there any objection to the recycling of tyres?