Tire Recycling Challenges: A Closer Look

Processing plant downtime, marketing the final product and securing input tires are some of the key challenges in the tire recycling industry.

FREMONT, CA: Tire recycling, unlike many other start-ups, requires little prior knowledge or disposable capital, so it is consistently ranked as one of the top start-up businesses. Anyone who is prepared to invest money, conduct research, and assemble a team can use the methods and equipment.

Significant challenges in the tire recycling industry are noted below:

Promoting the finished product: Old tires cannot be repurposed into new ones. The end result of a tire recycling plant must be sold to another industry. With so many possibilities available, picking which product to focus on might take time and effort.

The solutions are included below:

Crumb rubber: It is one of the most adaptable end-of-line tire recycling solutions available. It typically involves sorting out the fiber and metal found in tires and reducing them to pieces no larger than two centimeters in diameter. Some of the applications for crumb rubber include landscaping, artificial turf, construction and playground surfacing.

Tire-derived fuel: As the globe shifts from fossil fuels to renewables, tire-derived fuel is an excellent backup or primary product for many tire recycling facilities. Tire-derived fuel does not need to be processed beyond the primary and secondary shredding phases, making it cost-effective to generate.

Keeping the input tires secure: Scrap tires are heavy, cumbersome, and difficult to move. A company's productivity depends on maintaining a consistent flow of trash tires from where they are abandoned to the tire recycling facility.

The solutions are as follows:

Safely stockpile tires: Maintaining a backlog of scrap tires near the processing plant is an effective strategy to maintain a steady supply. Tire piles are a major fire threat, so industries must obey the local government's restrictions and instructions. Keeping a stockpile allows industries some wriggle room when tire vendors don't deliver or when they switch suppliers.

Promoting one’s businesses: Many people have yet to learn what tire recycling is or where the local tire recycling plant is. Advertising what industries do and where they will improve tire supply since people will finally know where to discard the tires that have been sitting in their backyards for years.

Processing plant downtime: Tire recycling plants primarily use an automated assembly line approach. The company's return on investment is mostly determined by how many tires it handles each day. Downtime, or when the equipment is not in use, occurs for various reasons and can quickly deplete the bottom line.