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The Swedish Tyre Recycling Association – SDAB or Svensk Däckåtervinning AB – recently issued its annual report 2020 where it reflects upon what the greatest challenge for sustainability is and how to overcome it. In the press release, it stresses that humanity’s power to impact the ecosystem, an impact which is often more negative than positive, has led the Swedish Tyre Recycling Association to devote its Annual Report 2020 to this theme.

Birla Carbon, one of the leading manufacturers of carbon black globally, has announced its intent to bring down its net carbon emissions to zero by 2050. The announcement is seen as a natural progression in Birla Carbon’s leadership in the area of Sustainability and circularity. Birla Carbon recently announced the availability of Sustainable Carbonaceous Materials (SCM) through the launch of its ContinuaTM brand. Birla Carbon’s net zero announcement aligns with The Paris Agreement, signed as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on climate-change mitigation, adaptation, and finance. It also aligns with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Tire Industry Project SDG Roadmap aimed at addressing health and environmental impacts associated with the life cycle impact of tires towards a sustainable future. Within the Aditya Birla Group, Birla Carbon is collaborating with sister companies to develop decarbonization initiatives through the Aditya Birla Science and Technology Center.

PRISM™ – a recycled rubber and plastic innovation company based in Kirkland, WA, United States – reports that its first-of-its-kind process converts recycled tire rubber into fully functional, sustainable, like-new rubber, attracting $23.5 million in total capital investments since the company’s founding in 2019. The latest round of investment comes from Seattle-based Columbia Pacific Advisors and the Baty Family. The new investment will provide PRISM™ the capital to expand their operations as well as their research and development efforts. Based in Kirkland, Washington, PRISM™ Worldwide has developed a patented clean technology that converts 100% of end-of-life tires (ELT) into functional, sustainable, like-new rubber and plastic polymers. The resulting product is called PRISM Thermoplastic Rubber (PTR™) and is used in the manufacture of a number of rubber and plastic products. This unique process is the result of thirty years of research and refinement inspired by the path to sustainability in the circular supply chain.

The U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association (USTMA), in partnership with the University of Missouri and The Ray, a nonprofit proving ground for sustainable transportation technologies, published this July a state of knowledge report that assessed existing research on the economic, performance and environmental benefits of using ground tire rubber (GTR) in asphalt. The report finds that rubber modified asphalt is a resilient pavement solution to rebuild America’s roadways and a promising sustainable and circular end-of-life market for scrap tires. The report also provides recommendations for additional research to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the technology’s impact.

A German recycler Stadtwerke Osnabrück has revealed plans to construct a tire pyrolysis plant that will consider sustainability principles and process 100 percent of scrap tires in the Germany city of Osnabrück. The plant will be given a name of Pieswerk, and it will rely on a special thermo-chemical process of pyrolysis during recycling. This will help to recover raw materials from scrap tires. The Stadtwerke supervisory board has already given the "green light" to pursue the Pieswerk plans. Stadtwerke CEO Christoph Hüls stressed that the project is still undergoing early stages but his company wanted to make the information public in order to be transparent. He also emphasized that pyrolysis is not well-known among the public but this process “has proven itself many times and that many will certainly also use at home – for self-cleaning of the oven."

Orion Engineered Carbons S.A. (NYSE: OEC), one of the leading global suppliers of specialty and high-performance carbon black, has partnered with RISE Research Institutes of Sweden in a project to develop and produce renewable carbon black (rCB). This collaboration represents an important step towards more climate-neutral carbon black production by replacing traditional carbon black feedstock with pyrolysis oil from biomass oil. Orion plans to convert the biomass oil into carbon black using its small-scale furnace reactor in Kalscheuren, Germany and will explore ways to upscale the process to match market demands. Additionally, using a pilot-scale reactor at its site in Piteå, Sweden, RISE will evaluate the use of electrofuels, such as plasma or hydrogen from electrolysis, as sustainable heat sources for the carbon black process.

MOL and Tatneft, one of the largest oil and gas companies in Russia, have solemnly launched a joint project for a rubber bitumen plant in the Republic of Tatarstan. According to MOL, the project partly involves end-of-life recycling. The companies have also agreed to establish a joint venture that, besides manufacturing and selling rubber bitumen, will also be authorized to market MOL's technology license in the Commonwealth of Independent States. The investment is partly financed by the HEPA Hungarian Export Promotion Agency tender funding.

According to the press release of SIGNUS – a Spanish end-of-life tire management authority – from July 2021, during 2020, the organization managed 150,228 tons of end-of-life tires which it turned into new useful products for different applications. Of the total amount of tires collected, about 12% went for reuse (second-use or retreading), 35.2% were for energy recovery and the remaining 52.8% was recycled in the different tire recycling plants in Spain. Among the main uses for the material obtained from the end-of-life tires in 2020, there are 21,660 tons for the installation of about 215 football fields, 14,637 tons for the construction of approximately 2,900 playgrounds and 2,202 tons that were used to pave some 200 kilometers of highways, among others.

SIGNUS Ecovalor – a Spanish end-of-life tire managaement authority – reports that the American tire manufacturer, Cooper Tire & Rubber Company Europe Ltd, joins the organization with the aim of guaranteeing the correct environmental management of the tires they put on the market, when those are at the end of their useful life.