General Information

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Introduction
The average passenger car tire measures about 26 inches across, but take away just a quarter-inch of tread and it becomes an accident waiting to happen.

The United States, like the rest of the industrialized world, goes through a lot of tires. Approximately one tire is discarded per person each year. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 250 million scrap tires are generated in the United States each year, not counting another 45 million scrap tires that are used to make 34.5 million automobile and truck tire retreads every year.

Until the 1960s, rubber from scrap tires was routinely recycled, but that started to change as cheap oil imports — the raw material behind synthetic rubber — made reclaimed rubber less valuable, and the spread of steel belted tires made tire recycling more expensive, difficult and time-consuming.

As so often proves true when waste makes short-term economic sense, the long-term consequences of wasting scrap tires began to accumulate.

Scrap tires not only waste landfill space, they can damage the linings put in place to keep groundwater and surface water from mixing with landfilled contaminants. Tires discarded illegally — individually as litter or collectively in clandestine tire dumps — are an eyesore and a drag on surrounding property values. They also pose threats to public health and safety.

There are about two hundred species of mosquito in the United States and Canada; 43 of them can carry West Nile Virus. One exotic species, the aggressive Asian Tiger Mosquito (Aedes albopictus), arrived in Texas in a shipment of used tires from Japan. By 1996, Asian Tiger Mosquitoes had reached the Northeast and other parts of the US.

In 1989, only 10 percent of the scrap tires generated in the United States were reclaimed through recycling or other uses. Today, more than 80 percent of scrap tires are pulled from the waste stream and reused in some way.