What Can We Do with Recycled Rubber?

Recycled Rubber Is Full Of Opportunities.

Recycled rubber is a product with boundless opportunities and applications—many of which we’re only beginning to discover. So far, innovators and entrepreneurs have found that crumb rubber and other recycled rubber products have applications in many sectors, including medicine, infrastructure, agriculture, and more.

  • Infrastructure.

    Recycled rubber used in rubber-modified asphalt (RMA), provides increased surface durability, lower lifecycle costs, and emissions reductions—all while reducing traffic noise.

  • Medical.

    In healthcare facility surfaces and nursing home floors, recycled rubber provides comfort and quiet for medical professionals and patients. It's water resistant, so it can't be damaged by spills or moisture and its high degree of surface friction make it slip resistant, which is especially useful for healthcare and nursing facilities.

  • Agriculture.

    Recycled rubber helps increase yield and efficiency for the agricultural sector. It's used in vegetation protectors and windbreaks, sheds, livestock mats, bumpers, feeders, and agrimats.

  • Playground Surfaces.

    Recycled rubber provides a shock-absorbent material that helps cushion falls and spills when children play. Recycled rubber surfaces can be designed to be widely usable, accessible, and ADA-compliant—a feature that grass and other industrial surfaces lack.

  • Sports.

    Across the country, recycled rubber is used in thousands of numerous tennis courts, cycling tracks, gym floors, running tracks, mats, and even treads in athletic shoes, helping to broaden sports and fitness opportunities.

  • Home & Garden.

    A variety of everyday household products, including landscaping mulch, flowerpots, garden hoses, tables and benches, and welcome mats use recycled rubber as a material.

  • Tire Manufacturing.

    Recent technological innovations have allowed recyclers to recover carbon black, a material used in manufacturing to protect tires from UV light and ozone, from end-of-life tires. This advancement will enable manufacturers to take old used tires and transform them into recovered carbon black (rCB), which can then be used in new tires just as effectively as traditionally produced carbon black.

  • Construction.

    Rubber produced from end-of-life tires, known as crumb rubber, can be used as a partial replacement for concrete fillers such as gravel and sand to produce rubberized concrete. Rubberized concrete is an innovative solution for construction projects and reduces the environmental impacts of concrete when compared to traditional mixes.