Re-Tired: Driving the Future of Sustainable Rubber

Written By Corteney Mack

Think about the tires on your car right now. They carry you to work, take your kids to school, and endure thousands of miles of hot asphalt, rain, and gravel. But what happens when the tread wears thin and those tires are finally "retired"?

For a long time, the answer was pretty bleak. Old tires ended up rotting in landfills or, worse, dumped illegally on the sides of our local streets and in wooded areas.

But what if we stopped looking at old tires as trash, and started looking at them as an incredibly durable, unrefined raw material?

Welcome to Re-Tired: Driving the Future of Sustainable Rubber. In this new bi-weekly series, we are going to explore how one of our biggest modern waste challenges is being transformed into a vital resource that builds up our communities. Because when a tire is retired from a vehicle, its real work is just beginning.

The Roadmap: What Can a Scrap Tire Become?

Right here in the Mid-South, local facilities like Memphis Tire Recyclers are actively rescuing hundreds of thousands of tires from the streets and processing them into sustainable materials. Without using any harmful chemical manipulation—just heavy-duty shredding and sorting—a single discarded tire can be transformed into several world-class products:

• Crumb Rubber: By shredding tires down to a quarter-inch chip, the rubber is repurposed into safe, shock-absorbent surfaces. The next time your child falls at a local playground and bounces back up unbruised, or you go for a jog on a high-end athletic track, you are likely stepping on crumb rubber.

• Tire-Derived Fuel (TDF): When shredded into uniform two-inch chips, tires become a highly efficient alternative fuel source. Industrial plants that traditionally rely on coal can use TDF in their boilers because it burns hotter and is often much more cost-effective.

• Civil Engineering Aggregate: Rubber is virtually impenetrable and highly durable, making it a secret weapon for builders. Shredded tires are used as a lightweight aggregate to line septic tanks, reinforce bridge abutments, and create better-draining road beds.

• Marine and Specialty Applications: The recycling process leaves nothing to waste. Even the thick sidewalls of tires are cut out and sold to commercial shipping companies, who use them to line the hulls of their massive ships to prevent damage at port.

Coming Up: In the Words of the Expert

We don't just want to tell you about the future of sustainable rubber; we want you to hear it straight from the people doing the work on the ground.

Starting next week, and continuing every other Wednesday, we will be handing the microphone over to Corteney Mack. As the co-founder of Memphis Tire Recyclers—one of only two full-service tire recycling plants in Tennessee—Mack has been at the forefront of eliminating local blight and turning it into revenue, jobs, and sustainable products.

Through Mack's firsthand experience, we’ll dive deep into the fascinating mechanics of the recycling process, the economic benefits of keeping this industry local, and how everyday citizens can be part of the solution.

We can't wait to hit the road with you. See you on Wednesday!