Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2013 13:13:51 -0400
From: “connectnc.net”
Subject: chewing up old tires for $$$
I read a recent post about tire recycling and I actually know a little about the process . Several years ago I watched a machine chew up old tires and the process went from tires , to big chunks , to smaller chunks to finally a black powdered form much like sand in consistency . The now recycled powder or chunks was mixed with resins and turned into new tires for buggies at your local grocery store , park benches that literally last for ever , bumpers for everything from loading docks to door stops , it was used as fill and sound deadener for new cars , shoe soles and a ton of other things depending on the final content of rubber of fiberglass and steel .
Tires are 90% rubber compound with about 10% steel wires and fiberglass strands to make the tire bead that locks onto the rim strong so it wont pop off. The combination of steel and fiberglass is wound into belts that maintain the shape of your tire . Because of the way tires are made and the combination of the components they are in many ways very difficult to repurpose but not impossible .
Someone many of us knew really well was Vernon Jessup . Vernon was a very unique person . He was a convicted felon with the IQ of a rocket scientist . He wasn’t a bad person , not mean just had certain sticky finger issues but once you got him to focus on something there wasn’t anything he couldn’t build .
I liked Vern even though he stole the engine out of a 72 Pontiac from me . I didn’t trust him no further than I could throw him but I did like him .
Vern saw one of these machines and he felt the machine was far to big for practical use here so he built a smaller version on a tractor trailer flat bed . You could throw tires in and like a wood chipper it would come out into a hopper in much smaller chunks . This made transport of tires and collection so much easier as it would chew up a full truck load of tires so they took up 1/4 the space . He found a company that made things from chewed up tires and was ready to start going around to dumpsters and tire stores grabbing up every tire he could . He was set to make some real $$$ .
I know that even though tire stores liked the idea of not having to take their tires to the landfill , someone in the county government slammed the door on him . It was ugly with threats of fines and even jail for improperly disposing of tires even though he had a company to buy the ground up tires . He had a paving company looking at using the chewed up tires with pulverized recycled glass for ( Glassfault ) It greatly reduced paving cost and made a heck of a black top !!
Again someone at the county level slammed the door on him .
He finally gave up and took the machine apart , reworked the engine location on the flat bed to build a firewood machine that later made it into the Chatham News . I spent two days helping him paint that monster .
This is what I was talking about when I said Chatham County was not conducive to new business or existing business . It finds ways to strangle business that doesn’t meet someone’s idea of a promising enterprise or line someone’s pockets with $$$. Tires are a huge wasted resource because of the expense of the recycling process but they can be repurposed into thousands of things .
If someone has a way to recycle them I say they need the opportunity to do so . It will help clean up the planet and make ( JOBS ) ,you know the thing Chatham County doesn’t have many of anymore . Goodnite Mark