Environment

People have always thought that our world had endless energy sources as well as raw materials. So, their behaviour would not have caused pollution or damages to the environment. It has soon been clear instead that our everyday actions are affecting the conditions of our planet.

Waste solid tires represent a big pollution problem. Every year in Europe thousands of waste tires are abandoned or left in garbage dumps. They pollute our landscapes in a permanent way. A cigarette decomposes in two years time; aluminium cans take a hundred years; a glass bottle decomposes in a thousand years. What about rubber? We do not know it exactly, it is thought more than a thousand years.

The European Law 1999/31/EC clearly bans to give post consumer industrial tires to landfills, both in whole or shredded shape. The aim of this law is to save a huge quantity of raw material and decrease pollution at the same time.

There is more: in the near future new processing methods, which are being tested by scientists, will allow people to bring back materials to pure raw rubber through a method called depolymerisation. We also have to bear in mind that there are near 8 million tons of waste tyres every year which are not disposed in the correct way. Will you help us to do something useful for our environment?