Ditching old car tyres, HOW??

[Pillock]

Waste transfer licences are summat like £150, and you could use a knackered transit. All you need is an industrial shredder, that's the only pricey bit.

[Rave]

Years ago, probably 20 years, I read a story about a bloke who'd bought an enormous pile of tyres on abandoned airfield from his local council for a nominal quid, and then remortgaged his house to buy an industrial shredder for them. Apparently it was paying off for him. I've been interested ever since.

 

If you think about it there must be at least a kilo of steel in your average worn out radial tyre (so at current prices at least a quid's worth), and maybe 5kg of rubber. Rubber crumb has uses for playgrounds, playing fields and the like, or it can presumably be burned in a decent incinerator for a calorific value approaching that of the oil it's made from. The problem I think is that separating the two is bloody difficult, and the sheer mass (and hence difficulty in transporting any distance) vs. value is very low. You'd think someone would have found a way to make it work though.

 

A few years ago I was getting my car MOTd, and while I was waiting a guy in a LWB high top Sprinter turned up at the garage. They pulled a load of tyres out of the eaves while he stuffed his van to absolute capacity, it already had hundreds in when he arrived. They counted that he'd managed to stuff a further 50 in, so a £50 note came out of the till and was handed to tyre man with no obvious receipt going the other way, and off he went.

 

A couple of years ago I decided that I was never going to do anything with the four wheels I'd kept off our old Mk1 Clio when we scrapped it, and I needed the space in the garage, so I took them up to a backstreet tyre place and told them they could have the two decent Contis with plenty of tread on if they took the two worn out Barums as well and gave me back the wheels so I could take them to the scrap metal dealer. They pretty much bit my hand off.

[Richard]

  On 01/02/2017 at 16:33, Lankytim said:

I remember a guy in Brum set up a business collecting scrap tyres for a quid each or something , he rented a large warehouse from the council but didn't pay any rent. By the time the council repossessed the warehouse he was long gone and had left them a few thousand tyres as a present.

That happened here with mattresses, carpets and plasterboard. http://www.fifereporter.com/fife-news/court/directors-in-dock-over-fife-waste-dump-pollution/

[DodgeRover]

  On 03/02/2017 at 02:29, Rave said:

Years ago, probably 20 years, I read a story about a bloke who'd bought an enormous pile of tyres on abandoned airfield from his local council for a nominal quid, and then remortgaged his house to buy an industrial shredder for them. Apparently it was paying off for him. I've been interested ever since.

 

If you think about it there must be at least a kilo of steel in your average worn out radial tyre (so at current prices at least a quid's worth), and maybe 5kg of rubber. Rubber crumb has uses for playgrounds, playing fields and the like, or it can presumably be burned in a decent incinerator for a calorific value approaching that of the oil it's made from. The problem I think is that separating the two is bloody difficult, and the sheer mass (and hence difficulty in transporting any distance) vs. value is very low. You'd think someone would have found a way to make it work though.

ff.

Don't know where you are weighing stuff in but today's price locally for steel is £60 a ton so a kilo is 6p.

 

Tyre shredders get through blades at a phenomenally expensive rate (they're also noisy and dirty having watched them in operation whilst keeping an eye on the pile for saleable part worns ) and it's very difficult to achieve decent separation of the wire from the rubber. There's enough people doing the same thing to mean prices for shredded rubber bits stay low.

 

Heating the remains under vacuum will enable materials to be separated but is energy intensive.

[Guest bangerfan101]

Tip I use doesn't bat an eyelid at 4 a time. Saves them cleaning up fly tipped tires

[Rave]

  On 03/02/2017 at 09:22, DodgeRover said:

Don't know where you are weighing stuff in but today's price locally for steel is £60 a ton so a kilo is 6p.

 

You're right, I was being a spoon.