The first week of October was a productive time for tire recycling innovators in Canada and beyond.

The Annual General meeting of CATRA’s provincial members held in Niagara was immediately followed at the same venue by the bi-annual Recycled Rubber Symposium hosted by the Tire & Rubber Association of Canada (TRAC).

CATRA’s AGM allows individual member provinces to share their successes, challenges and changes, helping to identify issues and initiatives that benefit from common consideration.

CATRA and Ontario Tire Stewardship (OTS) were sponsors of TRAC’s 2016 symposium, which focused on “Driving Toward the Circular Economy.”  A review of the symposium was recently published by CATRA’s Ontario member and an extract is reproduced here with the permission of the writer, Andrew Horsman, Executive Director of OTS.

The Tire & Rubber Association of Canada’s bi-annual Recycled Rubber Symposium is an international gathering that brings together a wide range of stakeholders to encourage discussion and foster innovation within the industry.  The symposium included presentations from around the globe that touched on areas such as driving the circular economy, legislative comparisons, and industrial applications of rubber devulcanization.

Some of the presentation highlights include:

  • An experimental house built by Red River College which allows for consistent comparison of traditional infill with recycled rubber infill.  The early results show great benefits surrounding moisture, heat, and cooling – This is a project to watch!
  • Research being conducted by Ecopneus out of Italy that is looking at the impact of environmental factors, such as pollution on crumb rubber applications and the potential health effects.
  • New plant life that Bridgestone is currently investigating for the creation of a more sustainable tire.  In 2015 they created the first tire made out of the Guayule plant!
  • The interesting work that Titan Tire Reclamation is doing to find ways to recycle mining tires in Fort McMurray.

One of the most positive aspects of the week’s learnings was to see the increased use of recycled rubber for high value products across Canada.

Given the amount of research taking place within the industry and dedicated organizations involved, there is promise of an interesting year ahead!

For the full review and other OTS articles, blog posts, videos, recycled tire product updates and other news related to tires, please visit http://rethinktires.ca/category/media-centre/