Subtitles section Play video
-
Every day, this power plant in eastern Turkey chews up thousands of tires, then burns them to generate electricity for 30,000 homes.
-
Turning tires to energy is one way to deal with the billions of tires that usually end up in landfills around the world.
-
And it's become more popular in the last decade—industrial-scale plants popping up in China, the United States, and Canada.
-
The process is especially valuable in Turkey, which imports most of its oil and gas, and it contributes at least $8 million a year to Turkey's economy, according to ERA Environmental Technologies.
-
(Turkish) It simply looks like a tire, but is a rich resource.
-
Automakers produced three billion tires worldwide last year.
-
The key ingredient in most of those tires is synthetic rubber made from petroleum.
-
Basically, tires are poisonous for the environment.
-
Pollution from car tires washes into waterways in the Pacific Northwest, and scientists say it's killing salmon populations.
-
And down the line, they eventually release chemicals into groundwater and air if they are left to break down in landfills.
-
So what can we do with them?
-
I'm strongly in favor of anything but just landfilling them. That makes no sense whatsoever.
-
But what you wanna do is, as responsibly as possible, get the most value out of this.
-
Tires can be burned to create energy, but experts say they can also be highly toxic.
-
What I think is happening is it's all the other stuff that's put into the tire in addition to the petroleum, like the sulfur.
-
It's when you burn that that you start to get this increase in toxicity.
-
That's where the problem is — not the petroleum, per se. It's all the other junk that's incorporated in the petroleum to make it into a tire.
-
So what about finding new uses for old tires?
-
They can be used to produce cement, or ground into crumbs and shaped into mats, like the ones used in playgrounds.
-
In India, one startup company turns tires into fashionable sandals.
-
Still, energy's becoming the main destination for the thousands upon thousands of tires we throw away yearly.
-
The tire-fueled power plant in Turkey recycles 20,000 tons every year.
-
(Turkish) We both contribute to the country's economy by generating electricity, and we also eliminate the environmental damage of the tire, one of the world's most dangerous wastes.
-
First, machines use magnets to separate the thin metal wires from inside the tires.
-
The rubber that's left is heated to produce something called pyrolytic oil.
-
The oil can then be burned to generate electricity.
-
It's still not the most environmentally friendly process overall.
-
But it does mean that these hunks of rubber, coated in fuel and fueled with byproducts, that could have sat in landfills releasing harmful chemicals for decades,
-
are instead powering Turkish homes and contributing to the economy.
-
It's really great material. I mean, after all, a little bit of it's lost by erosion on the surface of the tire.
-
And at some point, there isn't enough tread to use it before, but most of the tire is still there.
-
So let's use all of that technology that created such a great material in the first place. Let's use it again.