Earth Talk: Can tire industry go green?
Dear EarthTalk: What would it take to produce “green” tires? The tire industry is huge and I understand that tires contain a large amount of petroleum products. Is there an alternative? Tires are indeed no friends to the environment. Most tires on the road today are constructed of roughly equal parts natural rubber, petroleum and “carbon black” filler derived partially from burned fossil fuels, along with a dash of other chemical additives to improve functionality. The tire industry has embraced recycling in recent years, but still some 25 percent of tires wind up in landfills, according to Michael Bloch of the GreenLivingTips .com website. Still others are incinerated, which releases benzene, lead, butadiene, styrene and other potential carcinogens into the air we breathe. Even worse, Bloch reports, nearly half of the spent tires in the U.S. are used as “Tire Derived Fuel” and burned alongside other dirty polluting fuels such as coal. According to the Rubber Manufacturer’s Association
