Where did your wheels take you this summer? For many British Columbians, this summer of road trips was the chance to exchange plane travel for tire travel and take in those dream destinations closer to home.
Whether you prepared for your journey with a fresh set of rubber or you’re finishing the season before switching out for fall, new life awaits for your old tires.
Recycling your old tires isn’t only easy and the environmentally friendly option, it actually benefits your community.
Here’s how:
Tires collected through the Tire Stewardship BC have the steel and fibre removed before being turned into crumb rubber. The rubber is then transformed into valuable products for your community, such as playground surfacing, running tracks and colourful, resilient flooring in recreational facilities.
With more than $5.1 million in grants awarded since 2009, projects in the Kootenays have ranged from school playgrounds in Fernie, Rossland, Trail and Nelson to the Creston Equine Therapeutic Riding Area and Outdoor Fitness Park in Castlegar. And summer fun is definitely cooler with recycled rubber underfoot at Cranbrook’s Kinsmen Spray Park and Creston’s Splash Park.
You’ll also find those old summer tires given a new life as flooring and mats for agricultural and industrial use, and as coloured landscaping mulch.
In fact, since 1991 BC has collected almost 100 million tires, tires that are processed right here in BC, with much of the crumb produced by the recycler in Delta used used by an Abbotsford recycled rubber mat manufacturer: a real made-in-BC solution.
Many of those tires have been reimagined into feature elements of more than 300 community spaces here in the Kootenays and throughout the province – projects created using recycled rubber supported by a TSBC grant.
Stewardship is super-simple
When it’s time for new tires, simply leave the old ones with your retailer to be recycled. If you’ve already made the switch and have old tires around the garage, find your closest Return to Retailer drop-off location at www.rcbc.ca.
And if the summer’s mountain bike adventures have left you with a bike tire or two, TSBC is happy to welcome those tires as well!
Additional partnerships connect TSBC with other BC stewardship programs, including those working with Indigenous communities, and other tire recycling programs across Canada, with the goal of sharing information and expertise.
Learn more at tsbc.ca
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The not-for-profit Tire Stewardship BC manages BC’s tire recycling program, collecting an Advance Disposal Fee, or eco fee, on the sale of every new tire. The fees pay for transporting and recycling of BC-generated scrap tires ensuring that the tires are disposed of in environmentally responsible ways instead of ending up in landfills.
