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Tyres – Repurpose them on your farm

PRACTICAL solutions are often found when someone dares to think outside the box. For Pete Singleton, of Warrnambool, the sight of an on-farm fire that made its way to a pile of tyres used for a silage pit was the catalyst for ‘Tyresing Recycling Pty Ltd’ and after a lot of global research and trials he came up with a way of effectively and efficiently reusing old tyres on farm.

Like everyone else, Pete buys tyres for his vehicles and has to pay a levy to have the old tyres disposed of – a cost of $10 per tyre. The tyre business then either sends them to Melbourne by truck or sends them to farms for use on silage pit covers. What we are left with is a national stockpile of tyres on farms, and the government is now trying to evaluate how many tyres are actually on farms around Australia.

How many tyres go to landfill in Australia?

An estimated 130,000 tons (the equivalent of 16.2 million used car tyres or 28% of all old tyres generated) ended up in landfill or were buried – a number that is shrinking every year. Around 13,000 tons (the equivalent of 1.6 million used car tyres or 3% of those generated) were dumped or stockpiled.

Three new dump sites have been opened around Melbourne where shredded tyres are going into landfill. So, the rubber is initially processed into a tyre for our use, then we pay for disposal, then the intact tyre goes to Melbourne where it is processed (shredded – to take up less room) and dumped in landfill! So, we have paid to process the tyre again but for no usable outcome!

What if there was a better way?

Around 12 months ago, Pete bought some tyre cutters from China and set them up on a tandem trailer and started cutting tyres on farms. He then cut the side walls out of the tyres and tied them together with baling twine, forming a grid. This made a much lighter and more manoeuvrable grid of rubber to place over the plastic on a silage stack. The grids are also easier to physically handle, store and manage. The trailer can also be transported from one farm to another, so processing can be done on site.

This left the tread part of the tyre – so what can be done with that?

Pete started cutting these into lengths and flattening them out and making “BlackGold Carpet Mats”.

It is Pete’s dream to pave all dairy farm laneways in Victoria, with his BlackGold Carpet Mats. The obvious advantage is comfort under hoof for the cows, but also the longevity of the product and the ability to avoid track erosion issues. Recently, they turned 10,000 tyres on a dairy farm into 3.5 km of track with the tread and used the sidewalls to secure the silage pit.

These BlackGold Carpet Mats will be of particular interest around areas of stock traffic with the potential to get boggy – at the base of water-troughs, feed rings, gateways and feeders. Pete has seen huge interest in his products from feed-lotters, saleyards, machinery dealers, councils for erosion prevention, for insulation in horse stables, and so much more.

Pete explained that the only way this business is financially sustainable is by making the process of cutting and assembly highly time efficient.

“I have been working with a tyre retailer, and their system takes eight minutes to remove the sidewalls from a tyre. My system takes one minute.”

Not only does Pete’s system make environmental sense but it makes financial sense too.

He is so confident that this is a sustainable way of using this resource, that he is investing in a large storage and processing shed in Traralgon.

He sees this process as turning what would be a waste material into a resource. So, if you are interested in using your used tyre pile more efficiently, get in touch with Pete Singleton (look him up on Facebook) and turn them into an easily usable resource.

Tyre Stewardship Australia envisions a circular economy for tyres, where resources from end-of-life tyres are used and reused, such as through recycling, recovery and/or repurposing, ultimately boosting new industries and eliminating tyres from the waste stream.

Crumb Rubber (CR), derived from end-of-life tyres, has been utilised in road surfacing applications since 1975, with its first use in Victoria. Progressively, CR was then used in NSW and Western Australia. Recently the uptake has spread nation-wide, while also increasing the types of road surfacing applications that it can be utilised in.

There are so many proven benefits from using Crumbed rubber in our roads – the elimination of waste, supports recycling and sustainability principles and improves the environment from less landfill. Higher resistance to deformation at increased road temperature, reduced degree of rutting, improves driving comforts even on higher axle loads. Crumb rubber bitumen has enhanced engineering properties, Improved adhesion and bonding with aggregates, less windscreen damage and improves safety. It has a higher softening point, high flow resistance and higher impact resistance, takes heavy vehicular traffic. The increased viscosity avoids bitumen softening and flushing onto the surface of the sprayed seal.

Surely, using waste rubber in our road’s surfaces – particularly in areas of high rainfall – makes perfect sense.

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