Rubber Technology International (fka RTEK)

[timhyma]

33 million waste tires every year
20lbs per tire
66 million lbs crumb
$.15 per pound
$9.9 million potential revenue for Cali tires

Freeway Ramp to Showcase Use for Waste Tires

MILPITAS, CA, July 11, 2001 - In a project that is the first of its kind in the state, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and the California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB) have teamed up to create a freeway on-ramp that demonstrates new uses for old tires. Using one of the Bay Area's busiest freeways as a testbed, the project is taking 860,000 shredded tires that would otherwise have ended up in a landfill and using them as fill in the reconstruction of a 700-foot on-ramp for Interstate 880. Although this is the first project of this kind in the state, officials hope to see more projects like it in the future.

"This innovative project will provide solutions to some of California's most pressing problems," said Caltrans Director Jeff Morales. "It will help to improve congestion relief on our highways and test a unique method of disposing of troublesome used rubber tires that otherwise could end up in California landfills."

"California's love affair with the automobile results in a glut of 33 million waste tires every year," said Waste Board Chair Linda Moulton-Patterson. "We recycle about 70 percent of that number and public projects like this one will help raise that level even higher."

The CIWMB notes that it has retained the services of University of Maine professor Dana Humphrey, the nation's leading authority on civil engineering applications for used tires, to help with the project. In Maine, four active projects using tire shreds are helping manage the scrap tire problem by using more than 2 million tires.

The tire shred portion of the project started in mid-June and should be finished in August. When the project is completed, 8,598 tons of scrap tires, shredded down to two-to-12-inch chips and wrapped in a liner of geotextile fabric and soil, will have been used to anchor the on-ramp

http://sports.yahoo.com/m/environmental/news/getf/20010711/getffreewayramptoshowcaseuse.html