About Us
Carbon Recovery was established with the purpose of ending the improper disposal of waste tyres, also known as end-of-life tyres in New Zealand. Carbon Recovery will achieve this by creating a tyre recycling business that will be commercially viable and environmentally effective.
Bringing Tyre Recycling To New Zealand
Since first accepting end-of-life tyres in 2000 Carbon Recovery has been determined to keep waste tyres out of landfills and find a better use for them. Representatives of the company have travelled extensively visiting tyre processors, tyre recyclers, tyre manufacturers and government officials in Canada, the USA, Korea and Australia. Having studied and adopted the best tyre recycling approaches used overseas, Carbon Recovery is now ready to introduce tyre recycling technology and a tyre recycling programme to New Zealand.
Tyre Recycling Around The World
New Zealand lags far behind most other developed countries when it comes to recycling waste tyres. Programmes for recycling end-of-life tyres have been in place in Europe, the UK, North America and Asia for many years. Nearly all end-of-life tyres are now diverted from landfills in those countries. Waste tyres can be processed into crumb rubber and used to create a wide range of products. However practice has shown that there are many more end-of-life tyres than can be recycled so some of the tyres have to be removed from the waste stream.
Tyre Derived Fuel
In order for tyre recycling programmes to work 50% or more of all end-of-life tyres need to be removed from the waste stream and used as fuel. Tyre-Derived-Fuel (TDF) is created by chopping tyres into 2 or 4 inch “chips” and supplying them to high heat facilities such as cement kilns, steel plants and power generation facilities. Tyre-Derived-Fuel has been used successfully in such facilities in the EU, North America and Asia since the 1970’s. Due to its high calorific value and low sulphur content rather than increasing emissions tyre-derived-fuel lowers them, particularly if tyre-derived-fuel is displacing coal.
Carbon Recovery’s Tyre Recycling Operation in New Zealand
The company will collect tyres from tyre retailers, transfer stations, landfills and from abandoned tyre dumps throughout the country and process them into tyre chips (tyre-derived-fuel) at its facility in the Waikato. Eventually this resource will be used to power some of this country’s most energy hungry industries but until they are ready tyre-derived-fuel will be shipped to facilities offshore.