Driving a vehicle you know you have to change your tires every 2-3 years depending on how much distance you have been driving. Now what happens to the used tires? Here in the Amazonas region of Ecuador not so long ago they where just dumped into the biggest river … Also most of the tires now land on landfills or get burned. Which is absolutely not smart. Tires are a huge headache when it comes to waste management and recycling. Yet alone in the USA the problem of scrap tires is an estimated 300 million tires which are “disposed” of annually! It’s even a worse issue for the so called 3rd world countries.
Below documented you will find two examples of how we have been implementing the used tires can be of great longterm use. Learn how to do it your-self here (DIY).
- Using the tires to build outdoor stair on a steep hill
- Using the tires for a-net-like structure for a road-damm
The ecological effects of tires can span a long time due to their slow decomposition, but they can be used in a great number of ways thanks to that the longevity of the material. There are various clever DIY ways that each of us can reuse and recycle them and save them from entering the environment or taking up space in our landfills.
Stairs On A Steep Hill
For our use at Finca Yantza in Ecuador, we came up with one real simple and very practical use for the tires. We make stairs out of them. We have already used tires as main construction material for many 100 meters of outdoor paths on the property.
It’s no rocket science. Very simple Do It Yourself work. First we dig a round and flat hole with the size of the tire. Then the tire is filled with soil and finally the soil is reinforced with some heavy duty tool like a big hammer so it really compacted and there is no air. Ready is the first step. Living on a hill we depend on good stairs to get from one place to another.
Final Recycled Tires Stair On Steep Hill
Video: Construction Outdoor Stair
Damm Erosion Control With Net-Like Structure
Another use-case of the recycled tires. Erosion control of a road-damm for a pond. As you can see on both photos below. First we had to place all the used tires and tie them up together similar to a net-like structure. This was done with metal wire, connecting every tire with another 3 tires. This ensured that the net-like structure will stay strong. Additionally we used big wooden polen which where planted vertically about 1-2 meters deep into the ground to further give more strength to the structure. After that all the connected tires where covered up with about 50 to 100 cm of soil. And then we transplanted more vetiver grass and later Perennial peanut (arachis pintoi) ground cover to control any future top soil erosion.
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