A Mesa tire-shredding plant is among the growing number of green businesses that are helping to drive the new economy as well as clean up the environment.
Together with its sister plants in California and New York, Crumb Rubber Manufacturers turns old tires that were once thrown away into crumb rubber, which is used for everything from roads to synthetic turf bases and safer playground surfaces.
More than 6 million new tires are bought annually by Arizonans, which means that 6 million old tires wind up in tire yards. For years, most of those tires would simply stack up, often catching fire and creating smoky blazes that lasted for days.
Then as engineers developed ways to mix shredded tires with oil products to produce rubberized asphalt, the rubber that once hit the road became the road. Now, hundreds of miles of Arizona roads and highways are covered with rubberized asphalt.
Arizona Department of Transportation spokesman Doug Nintzel said that what was an experiment with rubberized asphalt 10 years ago has become an accepted and successful method of covering roads.
"Virtually the entire (Phoenix metro area) freeway system — about 200 miles — has a rubberized-asphalt overlay," Nintzel said. "We like it for its durability, and everyone likes it for its noise reduction. It is a product that has proven to be very durable and worked well for us in Arizona."
The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality is glad to see the state's old tires being put to good use, especially the ones that had been piling up near Mobile, south of Phoenix.
There were more than seven million tires sitting out there until CRM's Mesa plant started shredding them in April 2009.
ADEQ director Ben Grumbles said the Mobile tire mountain was particularly troubling.
"Those tires out at Mobile were a significant problem," he said. "They were a health risk because mosquitoes that spread the West Nile virus could breed in them. Also, they were a fire danger and a visual blight.
"Those tires going away is a very positive development; CRM is using a technology that protects public health and reduces environmental threats and produces a beneficial product," Grumbles added.
At the Mesa CRM plant, it takes about five seconds for a tire to be turned into fragments a few inches long. Further shredding turns tires into the consistency of coarse pepper.
The plant operates around the clock year round and breaks down up to 60,000 tires every 24 hours.
CRM has tire-recycling contracts with 13 of Arizona's 15 counties. Only Apache and La Paz counties are not under contract.
The Mesa plant shreds more than 10 million tires a year and produces more than 70 million pounds of crumb rubber annually.
Mesa Citizen posted at 9:53 pm on Mon, Jun 21, 2010.
Well done!!!