Challenges remain for recycling tires

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C.—Tire recycling is a well-established industry by now, but challenges and pitfalls remain in finding productive end-uses for scrap tires.

"In an ideal world, there would be no tradeoffs," John Sheerin, director, end-of-life tire programs for the U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association (USTMA), said.

But the very nature of tires, with the contradictory demands of recyclability versus performance, makes tradeoffs necessary, Mr. Sheerin told his audience at the 35th Clemson University Global Tire Industry Conference held recently at Hilton Head.

Issued for the first time last year, the USTMA's Sustainability Report lists as a guiding principle the goal that all scrap tires enter sustainable end-of-life markets, Mr. Sheerin said.

As of 2017, 81.4 percent of scrap tires found such markets, he said, but advances in tire technology present new problems for tire recyclers and perhaps even threaten the industry's continuation.

"Could there be a completely new paradigm for what a tire is?" Mr. Sheerin asked.

In the ideal circular economy, he said, a continuous flow of technology and materials creates perpetual value circles. While the tire industry is working its way toward that ideal, there won't be 100 percent efficiency in every loop, he said.

Furthermore, what constitutes a tire may well change.

"The tire industry could be disrupted, and current materials could be replaced," he said, citing the change from books to Kindles and the transition from LPs to CDs to MP3s.

Tires are designed to optimize multiple parameters, some of them contradictory as to the properties and materials they require, he said.

They not only are complex and made of many mixed materials, but the fuel-economy mandates of vehicle makers force tire producers to make their products as light as possible, Mr. Sheerin said.

This complicates recycling, which mandates heavy, simple, easily separated and segregated materials, he said.

Different end-markets for scrap tires use different properties of tires and tire materials, and some offer benefits that others don't, according to Mr. Sheerin.

"Someone has described rubber mulch as a seven-year reprieve from the landfill," he said, "but crumb rubber synthetic turf can be reused."

Technological advances in tire design have solved many of the performance tradeoffs in tires, such as the use of silica in tread compounds that yield long tread life and enhanced wet traction, but what future technological advances will mean to tire recycling have yet to be seen, he said.

"Pneumatic tires will be distributed at least 10 to 15 more years, and the end of life happens five years after that," he said. "For the foreseeable future, we'll be generating hundreds of millions of pneumatic tires. But the decisions made in tire technology will affect recyclability."

At the same time, retreaded truck tires are a key element in recycling, according to Clif Armstrong, president and CEO of Marangoni Tread North America (MTNA), another speaker at the Clemson conference.

Mr. Armstrong was MTNA vice president of business development when he delivered his speech at Hilton Head. After the conference, he was named the company's president and CEO to succeed the retiring Bill Sweatman, effective May 1.

Retreading a commercial tire requires seven gallons of oil, as opposed to 22 to manufacture a new tire, Mr. Armstrong said. On that basis alone, he said, retreading reduces the use of oil by some 217.5 million gallons annually in the U.S., based on an annual production ticket of about 14 million retreads.

Despite this, the market for retreaded commercial tires has declined slightly, and there have been several reasons for this, he said.

One is the surge in low-cost truck and bus tires from China. The United Steelworkers union petitioned the International Trade Commission (ITC) in 2016 for relief, and initially it appeared the U.S. government would intervene.

"In 2017, we thought we'd have duties," Mr. Armstrong said, referring to the ITC's preliminary finding of dumping. But an understaffed ITC reversed itself on the final determination.

It took a remand from the Court of International Trade in late 2018 — in response to a USW challenge of the ITC's ruling — for the ITC to finally vote in favor of duties in February 2019, Mr. Armstrong said.

The duties now apply to every truck and bus tire imported from China, and this will add as much as 80 percent to the cost of a $125 tire, he added, depending on manufacturer.

Even with reduced competition from low-cost Chinese imports, the proliferation of said imports up to now has meant fewer retreadable casings in the U.S. market, Mr. Armstrong pointed out.

"Casings have to be well manufactured and have integrity," he said.

The largest truck fleets in America put high value on retreadable casings and retread them multiple times.

"So why are low-cost imports doing so well?" he asked. "Because medium-sized fleets are looking at the right-now costs in making their purchasing decisions."

Mr. Armstrong suggested in his conclusion that Canada and Mexico also will have to consider tariffs on commercial tires from China to ensure the flood of low-cost, unretreadable tires is stopped for North American retreaders.