Re-using waste rubber

The study that looked at the economic advantages of re-using waste rubber as an ultra-fine powder (100 mesh and below) in new rubber and plastic products [4] listed three areas of major economic advantage ... 

The expression added value is often encountered in initiatives and activities that seek to re-use waste rubber in new products. An illustration of how this can be put into practice was provided in a presentation to the RubberCon 2014 (Manchester, UK) by Kind [22]. The presentation concerned the use of tyre crumb as a major ingredient in retread compound, and some up-to-date and informative price comparisons were provided that showed the potential cost benefits of using waste rubber crumb to manufacture new products. The figures provided are shown in Table 3.3. 

One of the attractions of sintering processes for re-using waste rubber is that they can be relatively simple and cost-effective, as they require... 

Other Methods for Recycling and Re-using Waste Rubber... 

Fifty percent of the total energy needed to produce plastic materials is used in the polymerization process. Thus at first sight, it seems sensible to re-use plastic and rubber waste materials (8 ). But Re-use processes have a negative influence on the macro-molecular structure which is mainly a chain depolymerisation effect (9 ). Therefore Re-use by itself is not a satisfactory process. In addition,a large proportion of the plastic waste is polluted and mixed with other types of waste so that Re-use is impossible. 

With regard to the recent waste tyre situation in Europe, by 2010 the European Tyre Rubber Manufacturers Association (ETRM A) was able to claim that the market for tyre-derived products was sustainable and economically viable and that the European recovery rate for end-of-life tyres had reached 96% [7]. In the same article the UK was reported as treating 100% of its end-of-life tyres. The figures that were included showed that of the 479,000 tonnes of end-of-life tyres arising in the UK during 2009, 8.5% were retreaded, 45.1% were processed into other materials, 24% were used as a source of energy, and 19% were re-used or exported. 

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