BETTER BUSINESS
Story by Gavin Myers
TAKING WASTE TYRES TO THE
NEXT LEVEL
Waste tyres have always left a black mark on the recycling industry. Rubber itself never disappears; no matter what you do with it, it will always languish in a landfill at the end of its life. That’s unless you can keep using it, over and over, in the manufacture of new tyres.
R
EVYRE is a Kiwi start-up with huge ambition – and huge potential. The company was started three years ago by CEO Shaun Zukor, who recognised the need to do more around tyre recycling in New Zealand. Zukor knew that to make a true impact on the 90,000 tonnes of tyre waste generated each year in New Zealand, and to make it an economically sustainable endeavour, he’d have to look beyond traditional mechanical tyre shredding that produces an impure crumb rubber of little value. Zukor’s research led him to a Canadian company called Tyromer that has developed a devulcanisation process that turns the tyre rubber back into its raw state (known as
Tire-Derived Polymer or TDP). Zukor was so convinced by what he saw, he put down a deposit there and then for the licences to operate the technology in New Zealand, Australia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
The extent of the problem Zukor explains that a tyre is made up of approximately 30% carbon black, 30% natural rubber, 30% synthetic rubber and other filler components. Natural rubber plays a large and important part in the construction of a tyre due to its good wear durability, flexiblilty and high tensile strength. Tony Hannon, chairman of InfraCo Limited, the holding company of REVYRE, explains that globally, 2 billion tyres
(50 to 80 million tonnes) go to waste per year. “Tyres account for half of the total global rubber utilisation, which means that, of that 50 to 80 million tonnes of tyre waste, about 14 million tonnes of natural rubber is discarded per year. Natural rubber is a resource in high demand, and so the sustainability of one-third of tyre componentry globally is under threat.” Currently, in New Zealand, the only legislation around waste tyres concerns the stockpiling of tyres in different regions. The tyres either get dumped illegally, are processed into shreds for incineration domestically, or are baled and sent offshore to be burnt in kilns. Things are changing, though, and soon waste tyres will need to be kept and processed locally.
“Tyres are a great resource if processed correctly,” says Zukor. The legislative environment is changing around the world, too. Australia has banned the exportation of baled tyres to Asia, while India – one of the world’s largest markets for waste tyres – is in the process of banning their importation. In Chile, 20% of tyres have to be recycled sustainably by 2025, and in Canada, all tyres are recycled. “There needs to be a massive mindset change and mandatory regulation around the disposal and use of devulcanised material,” comments Hannon.
The detail is in devulcanisation When a tyre is sent to waste, only 20% of it has
