The process of vulcanization discovered by Charles Goodyear makes tyres almost indestructible – a very important attribute when driving a car at 100 kms an hour! Unfortunately their toughness 
makes it very difficult to recycle tyres.
Tyre Piles
End-of-life tyres have a nasty habit of ending up in giant piles. A tire pile in Ohio, USA grew to 60 million tyres! The largest tire pile in New Zealand sits in the heart of one of our provincial cities and is estimated to be 600,000 passenger tyre equivalents (there’s passenger and truck tyres in the pile). The reason these piles occur and grow is that tyre collectors are paid a fee by tyre retailers to come and pick up their waste tyres. The trouble is these same tyre collectors have to pay a fee to dispose of the tyres. So the temptation is to continue to collect fees to pick up tyres and just let them pile up.
Tyres and Mosquitoes
Mosquitoes love to breed in tyres. Not only do tyres hold water very nicely and very still but being black they also hold the sun’s heat and keep the water nice and warm. Hordes of mosquitoes descending from tyre piles to attack people is a nuisance but the real danger is that tyre piles have been found to be ideal breeding grounds for exotic, tropical mosquitoes that enter temperate countries through their ports. If these mosquitoes can find a warm breeding ground like tyres then they and the very dangerous diseases which they carry can infest a previously unaffected country-like New Zealand.
Tyre Fires
Tyres do not self combust – but they have proven to be an irresistible target for arsonists. Everyone knows what a burning tyre looks like – the voluminous thick black smoke and the acrid smell. Picture a pile of thousands or even millions of tyres burning. The fires burn for weeks. The water sprayed by firefighters to keep the heat down (water will not put a tyre fire out) runs off into streams, waterways and the ground polluting and killing all wildlife. The smoke from the tyre fire fills the sky as far as 100 km’s away. The burning tyre pile is eventually extinguished by burying it. The cost of the subsequent unburying, treating and disposing of soil and burnt tyres can run in the millions of dollars. We’ve been fortunate in New
Zealand to not experience a major tyre pile fire but its only a matter of time until we do unless we start recovering and recycling them.
View our presentation video
Mosquitoes Disease and Scrap Tires
New York Times, Where Mosquitoes and Tires Breed
Origin of Tyres – The Charles Goodyear Story
