Where Do Your Old Tires End Up?

Are you curious about where those discarded tires end up? Do they become environmental pollutants, or are they recycled? Let me explain in detail.

Collection and initial sorting

Most old tires are sorted and stored after being collected from 4S stores or repair shops. When tire shops offer trade-ins, the old tires are also collected. In some cities where there are no dedicated rubber recycling points, tires are initially sorted by type, such as passenger car tires or truck tires, because different tires have different subsequent processing uses.

Crushing

Upon arrival at specialized tire processing equipment, the tires undergo a series of treatments:

🧩Manual Inspection: Workers select tires with retreading potential and send them for “remanufacturing.”

🧩Impurity Removal: The steel wire rings inside the tire bead are cut and removed by a specialized machine.

🧩Primary Crushing: The tires enter a shredder and are torn into palm-sized pieces of rubber.

Multi-stage crushing

The tire undergoes multi-stage crushing to become granular material.

🧩Coarse crushing: Tearing the tire into strips of 10-15 cm.

🧩Medium crushing: Further crushing into rubber blocks of 2-5 cm.

🧩Fine crushing: Grinding into even smaller particles.

Sorting

The process involves a multi-layered vibrating screen, magnetic separator, and air separator:

🧩Screening and Sorting

Old tire scraps enter the production line and are processed sequentially through a vibrating screen, magnetic separator, and air separator.

🧩Steel Wire Removal

Powerful magnets are used to remove over 99% of the steel wires. These wires are valuable and can be recycled for steelmaking.

🧩Fiber Removal

Airflow is then used to separate out mixed nylon, polyester, and other fibers. These materials can be used to manufacture insulation products.

🧩Rubber Particles

After these processes, what remains are pure rubber granules of varying sizes.

Usage

🧩Running Tracks and Sports Fields

The colorful synthetic running tracks and surfaces in school playgrounds contain about 20-30% rubber granules from old tires.

🧩Roads

Adding rubber powder to asphalt for paving makes roads more crack-resistant and quieter.

🧩Industrial Products

Such as conveyor belts in factories, rubber paving stones for outdoor use, sound insulation panels for buildings, and pallets for logistics.

🧩Creative and Trendy Products

🧩Clean steel wire is sent directly to steel mills as a high-quality raw material for steelmaking.

🧩The fibers are then processed into materials such as thermal insulation felt and geotextiles.

After being recycled, these materials may be bearing the footsteps of running on school playgrounds, transforming into noise-reducing asphalt layers under urban elevated roads, or becoming soft and safe flooring substrates in stadiums—they are continuing their functions and values ​​in different scenarios in new forms.

At Gomine, we have comprehensive tire recycling equipment to solve all kinds of tire recycling problems. Feel free to contact us anytime!