TreadWright's Anthony Showen to headline tire sustainability webinar

BOSTON — A national nonprofit committed to minimizing the negative impacts of consumer products and packaging is holding a webinar on tire sustainability on June 12, with Anthony Showen, CEO of retreader TreadWright Inc., as the featured speaker.

Boston-based Product Stewardship Institute (PSI) said the webinar will explore the technological innovation developed by TreadWright to achieve goals of sustainability, performance, and cost, as well as discuss how to support market development for higher end uses of scrap tires through procurement and other policies.

Other speakers scheduled to participate are David Stevens, managing director, Tire Retread & Repair Information Bureau; Tom Metzner, environmental analyst, Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection; John Knapton, mountain operations manager, Big Sky Resort; and Suna Bayrakal, senior associate for policy and programs, Product Stewardship Institute.

The event, scheduled for 1 to 2:30 p.m., will be moderated by Scott Cassel, CEO, Product Stewardship Institute.

The institute stresses in its description of the webinar that by diverting more than half of the 240 million-plus scrap tires generated annually to tire-derived fuel, the U.S. is missing opportunities to reuse and/or recycle scrap tires into new tires and other products, which in turn would create recycling jobs.

The institute's fundamental policy states that when manufacturers design, produce and manage their products in environmentally responsible ways, the products are inherently less toxic and less hazardous over the course of their lifecycle. This way of doing business also relieves taxpayers and governments of the financial and operational burdens of materials collection and management, the PSI said.

Houston-based TreadWright specializes in the remolding of light truck tires in a process that uses 70-percent recycled material and costs 40 percent less than new tires. TreadWright states its remolded tires support federal Executive Order 13693, which requires implementation of "opportunities to improve agency fleet sustainability" and outlines measures to make the federal government's operations more sustainable, including that "to improve environmental performance and Federal sustainability, priority should first be placed on reducing energy use and cost."

Online registration is open until June 12 at the PSI's website.