The 6.5 million soon-to-be- scrapped Firestone tires underscore a serious problem in our automobile culture: Far more tires are being discarded than can be recycled.
Many of the Firestone tires may find new life as protective playground cover, hot-burning fuel or a sturdier, smoother rubberized asphalt.
But some worry that others will add to fast-filling landfills or be stacked in illegal piles that could ignite stubborn and disastrous fires like those that destroyed 14 million tires and plagued the towns of Tracy and Westley during the past two years.
The number of Firestone tires is only a fraction of the quantity trashed each year. Car-happy Californians throw away some 33 million tires a year -- a supply that ``tremendously'' outstrips the demand for recycled rubber, said Steven Jones, a member of the California Integrated Waste Management Board.
Only 12 million to 18 million of those are recycled, leaving the rest to clog landfills or add to unsafe tire piles. ``In California, we're going to see at least 800,000 more (scrap) tires put into the system'' because of the recall, Jones said. ``It's a problem, but one that is manageable.''
The state is the largest generator of waste tires in a country where 270 million tires a year are scrapped. But tire recyling is on the rise. Sixty-six percent of those tires are reused nationwide, compared with only 11 percent in 1990, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Old tires are used in a number of ways: to generate energy, manufacture cement and line and cover landfills.
Tire recyclers say demand is also growing for recycled rubber products from running and horse tracks to exercise mats, and new technology is increasing the uses for recycled rubber -- such as making new tires.
ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS
The Firestone recall will not only be good for business, but it may help raise public awareness of the environmental benefits of recycling tires.
Since the recall began, the largest rubber recycler in Northern California has seen a 20 to 30 percent increase in tires coming in.
Those tires are not all Firestones, said Michael Byrne, president of Total Tire Recycling in Sacramento, which handles much of the Bay Area's scrap tires. Byrne said he has seen an across-the-board increase in all major brands.
``I think all this attention with the Firestone recall has the general public looking under their cars and paying attention to the status of any kind of tires,'' he said. ``My wife had me out on the driveway last Saturday rotating her tires.''
Byrne's company usually recycles 6 million to 8 million tires a year, cutting them into 2-foot-long pieces used to collect methane gas in landfill ditches and in smaller shreds that are used to cover landfills and as a drainage medium, instead of rock. Even smaller chips are burned as fuel in some power plants.
About 10 to 20 percent of the tires Byrne collects are in good enough shape to resell to used tire outlets, he said. But Firestone dealers are supposed to be drilling holes in the recalled tires to make sure they do not end up back on the streets.
Typically, Byrne said, business drops off as the weather cools. Spring and summer are the busy season for tire replacement. ``You'd expect to see it taper off this time of year, but business is as busy as it's been all year long,'' thanks to the recall, he said.
Waste Recovery West Inc. uses a similar process at its Livermore facility, where it consumes 1.5 million tires a year. The same number are used at its Calaveras Cement plant in Redding, where whole tires are burned for their high energy content in the manufacture of cement.
``There are a lot of little niches,'' said Mark Hope, president of the Portland, Ore., company. ``But at the end of the day, there are still a lot of tires you don't have homes for.'' INCREASING ENFORCEMENT
The state is trying to remedy that problem, by increasing enforcement of illegal tire dumping, whittling down longtime tire piles like those that burned in the Central Valley, and developing new markets for recycled rubber.
A bill on Gov. Gray Davis' desk would finance these initiatives by increasing the fee on each new tire from 25 cents -- the lowest in the country -- to $1. That would boost the waste management board's scrap tire program from $5 million to more than $29 million a year.
Brian Cardiff, who heads a tire recycling plant in San Leandro, said he is already seeing a growing market for his products, which include a gravel-like medium that can be used for safer playground surfaces and dust-free equestrian arenas.
Cardiff's Bay Area Tire Recycling is the only facility in Northern California producing such ``crumb rubber,'' including a fine, flourlike consistency that is added to asphalt to give it more durability and traction and make it less noisy. The small plant recycled 300,000 tires last year but is expanding its capacity to 1.5 million tires by January -- all of which Cardiff expects to be Firestones.
The other major producers of crumb rubber in the state are in Southern California, including the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, which made a deal this week to take 5,000 Firestone tires a day for the next year from dealers across the Southwest. Old tires also are being used increasingly as fuel.
Stockton Cogen Facility, the first in the state to pioneer the process, consumed 1.45 million tires its first year last year, said plant manager Tom Heller.
The plant adds shredded tires to the coal and petroleum coke it burns for the energy it sells to Pacific Gas and Electric. Five more such facilities are in the process of opening, and, together, they could dispose of 10 million tires a year, Heller said.
``It's environmentally friendly. It doesn't expose the community to the risk of tire fires by having tire piles around, and it keeps us from overfilling landfills,'' he said.
Both tire recyclers and environmental watchdog groups hope the demand for such products and processes can catch up with the supply of old tires, especially now that millions more are entering the waste stream.
``The old style of dealing with tires was throwing them in canyons. That's why we had those tire fires,'' said Byrne. ``It's a lot easier to make a buck when you don't have to deal with disposal.''
E-mail Janine DeFao at jdefao@sfchronicle.com.
CHART: WHAT HAPPENS TO SCRAP TIRES
Bridgestone/Firestone's recalled tires could become highway asphalt or garden hoses. In 1999, there were 273 million scrap tires in the United States, and most were recycled into such products as fuel, welcome mats or playground cover.
Tire Recycling On The Rise
Since 1990, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of scrap tires recycled . . .
1990 1999 Recycled 11% 76% Sent to a landfill or illegally dumped 89% 24% . . . and in 1999 the most common use was fuel. Tire-derived fuel 114 million Stockpiled or illegally dumped 33 million Legally sent to a landfill 32 million Civil engineering 28 million Stored 20 million Ground rubber (e.g. playgrounds) 17 million Exported 15 million Punched or stamped (e.g. welcome mats) 8 million Agriculture or misc. 6 million Source: Rubber Manufacturers Association ASSOCIATED PRESS GRAPHIC
source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/09/16/MN90078.DTL
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