Abstract

Waste tires are recognized as one of the most difficult waste products to manage in a modern society. They are not difficult individually, but are difficult collectively; particularly when world wide almost a billion such tires are disposed of annually. Waste tires are generated in industrialized societies at an annual rate equal to the human population which discards them, one scrap tire per person per year. The lack of adequate disposal methods and management systems in years past had lead to wide spread, cumbersome collection of waste tires in unmanaged or poorly managed waste tire piles. Problems associated with waste tire piles typically are: threat of fire and related environmental damage from a tire pile fire and the potential increase in vectors and pests. Secondary problems are
that tire piles require substantial volume or space prior to any type of processing and are an eyesore. One of the uses of waste tires is to recycle them into asphalt-rubber. In this paper, the environmental, energy consumption and CO2 aspects of using ground tire rubber from waste tires in asphalt-rubber is considered and evaluated. Various environmental studies of asphaltrubber are reviewed that demonstrate that asphalt-rubber is an environmentally acceptable paving material. Also, the end uses of ground tire rubber in terms of energy consumption from waste tires are analyzed in terms of: shredding for use in landfills as Alternate Daily Cover, shredding for use as tire derived fuel, and crumb rubber production with an end use in asphalt-rubber concrete pavements. This paper also touches upon a new aspect of environmental concern recognized in the Kyoto treaty and recently ruled upon by the United
States Supreme Court namely CO2 emissions. The major goal of this paper is to investigate the overall benefit to Society for each aspect of the use of asphalt-rubber.

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