Gabriel Lavinsky

Wow, thank you everyone that helped giving a little brick of information and, also, ideas and personal observations on this issue.
For me, I'm only convinced once more that:

1. The way we make tires today is dangerous for both health and nature, and a new design of the product/system is emergent.
2. There are relatively safe ways of reusing tires, once you avoid close contact and the fragmentation of it, which usually occurs faster when in exposure to the sun, or air, or liquid water. Also, using tire crumbs is probably not a good idea since it has been associated with diseases and soil leaching (think an infographic concerning safe uses for tire would be great).

Also, you convinced me there are some options of turning tires into useful things such as carbon and fuel, and that these might show a path towards a better tire-scenario.
I'm pretty happy with all the things brought here,
Thanks once again,
G.L

I've been living without Toilet Paper for about 3 months.
What I do?  Clean my ass with water from a squeeze bottle. Gotta scrub it inside the ass, removing all shit for a good cleaning too.
After it is all clean, I just dry the arse up with an old towel reserved for that.
Clean hands well after that.
Butt clean as a baby, the sensations are very unique. It is not as easy as using TP, that is true. But , leaving the squeeze bottle next to the toilet, makes it easier.
It sure is healthier, and it has been studied the properties of water to avoid anal diseases.
I have a website-project with studies about trash here in Brasil. It is in portugese, but you're all welcome to copy and paste the texts in google translator, and check the following post out, with some data about the amount of resources needed fo TP and the shit it is to clean our shit, evrdyay, with it. If you enjoy, look for the group of discussion in Facebook (end of marketing time, thank you).
Her's the link:
https://oficinadelixo.wordpress.com/2017/12/24/alternativas-para-o-papel-higienico/
Ecological hugs

Hi again. Well, concerning using tires underground: after everybody uses and then leaves the site, the tires will continue to disintegrate, and the risk of leaching and contamination of underground water will rise up with time, the speed of it will depend on the volume of tires used, and conditions of disintegration. This is obvious, since we are spreading a disposable full of toxic additives industrial product all over the planet (a very dangerous combination, plastic is another related issue).
To me, the fast we change into an ecological and circular alternative to the vulcanized tires, the best. Since I'm no specialist on the area, I can only gather my good sense, do some research and hope that more people see the danger of it and start moving towards a solution. But, please, no panic. Stress will not be a good guide.

Doing some wiki-research (and please, correct me if I have misunderstood something) I've found that, stepping some two steps back, and we have the origins of tires: created in the late 19th century, by Mr. Dunlop, the pneumatic was actually composed of a sort of rubber hose (rubber being a natural material extracted from the rubber tree, here in Brasil we used to export a lot of it until WWII). Well, this first tire could be used for some things, but as the car industry started to grow, they needed it to build more resistance to weight material, in order to impose the also crazy state of motorized transportation we have nowadays. So, remember: in its first state, tires were biodegradable.

The problem began when they started to combine this invention with another, which was the car based traffic system that was only emerging, and promising to connect cities and end up starvation, and other calamities. This is the modern age. The process used to enhance tires was vulcanization. This process brings a bunch of advantages to the tire, such as "good tensile strength and extensibility, it can return to original shape when the deforming load is removed, low water absorption", and some other cool things. Problem is, the most used method of vulcanization is the sulfuric method, which consists of accelerating the vulcanization process (needed for the resistance and durability desired) through the use of many additions, such as sulfur, zinc oxide, stearic acid, antidegradants, and others. I'm no specialist, I repeat, but I see the big problem lies somewhere in this part, through the process of sulfuric vulcanization and adding additives that makes tires such a toxic product.

What's the answer? I don't know, but we gotta close the loop, right? If it is to be disposable, tires technical parts should be easily separated from biodegrading parts and then be recycled in an economic functional way; also considering that these post-processes should work in any country, which would lessen the cost of sending tires to some country to treat it (and having the risk of having it burned just like happened in Kuwait video above). Don't know the answer, but maybe more people can add knowledge concerning this topic, so that we can start making the pressure needed to change it.
Related to the uses of tires concerning health, specifically, I've got a tire chair myself, I've made some using a simple technique (you can see some of it here: https://cinemobileblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/28/praca-de-central-carapina-270517/). After reading all these things, we have taken the caution of not exposing it to direct sunlight, and we have even covered ours with a kind of cloth in order to avoid direct contact with the hand-and-mouth (very common contact when you have tires furniture).

I know it is soap still but.. Here in Brasil, we find a lot of soap made from reused kitchen oil. It is usually associated with social business, since the maker, usually in a community center, receive used oil from community members and in trade give them a discount in the soap, or in other product they might sell.

This remind me of some thoughts regarding recycling that I wanna express:
I respect anyone when it comes to concerns on what to do with old tires. But.... for some people that seem to have this itch (right expression?) to reuse tires whenever they can, I gotta add: there is this great gap between the industry of production and the structure of the post-use of these products. Tire is one of the worst examples of it, it is useful and used all over the world, BUT we have not enough concerns from the producers on what to do with it, even more considering it will last more than 600 years decomposing, liberating toxicity as far as studies show.

So, big trouble, uh? How to solve it? Should we really be concerned about how to recycle it? If you are, good. But it seems more emergent to me to rethink the design of it, and even more, to remind people that recycling will not save the world. No way we can expect that. Recycle will help mend some trouble created by the actual crazy state of things, when we as global society produce a lot of stuff that we don't even want to know about after it is used, even when we know it is going to be bad for some neighbor country. In Brasil, we see tires specially in poor places, where they become home for mosquitoes and other plagues.

So, i think that:
if we just recycle, but don't bring in the critic (or concern) about the industry that produce  toxic material and have little concern about whatever happens next, we are giving a vote to a state of world where, as pointed earlier, recycling will make it worse, instead of making it better for the environment, both social and natural. If we really want this recycle thing to work, I think we should remember to bring in this critic, which we can attempt to resume it in the sentence: "OK, we are recycling, but this is not the solution, it is just a part of the immediate remedy. If we want to truly change this situation, we need to change the production industry, we need to redesign and consider the post-use right in the design of the product". I know many of you think like that, but here in Brasil I've been seeing many works with tires. Great (some), but many of them seem to bring the idea that we should be handling somehow this trouble, that we (common citizens) should find out a way of dealing with the tires we find out in the streets (without considering the great amount that get to the oceans), when it seems to me that it is more necessary to find out alternatives to the present state of tires.
But as we say here in Brasil, I'm just "problematizing" :P
Also that's the conclusion I've come to, to bring in these thoughts whenever working with reused tires. Not saying everybody should do the same

p.s: the FAQ seem a good idea. I also think that every discussion could have some kind of 'Highlights Table' of it, maybe done by some volunteer. Could make it easy for those who want to catch up info quickly. Cheers  

David Livingston wrote:mind you it can go wrong https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/nov/25/chinas-bike-share-graveyard-a-monument-to-industrys-arrogance

David

It seems to me more like a design problem than a problem with the idea of bike sharing. Bikes will be wasted with time. That doesn't mean they should  necessarily go to graveyards, since there could be a way of removing their parts and reusing them into the production of new bikes. The question is, how to do it, I don't know, but can just imagine : P
I've read a 2000's book from Fritjof Capra, in which he described the production of new 'super-cars' that could have it's parts melted and used in the production of new ones. Bikes are not that complex, I don't believe it is hard to reuse them. The problem is, it seems cheaper in many economies to build new things than to reuse old ones.

Radio Paradise
http://www.radioparadise.com/rp_2.php?#

Very eclectic, so good

Wow, thank you a lot for all replies. Glad to see my intuition was right, this is a group for a good debate. Thanks for the warm welcomes too!

So, as Chris pointed, the dangers of it are pretty much off gassing. However, I admit I'm still not too sure about the leaching effect. The researches I looked upon don't show a clear final result, but usually say that there is gradual leaching of zinc and some potentially toxic elements into soil and water. I think that some tire uses, some of which happen with ecological intentions, such  as using it for leveling the earth, or for making some sort of "natural" stair,  are not so ecological unless you take some actions concerning the bad effects of it. A solution I think would be some kind of plastic sheet between tires and soil, in order to reduce the leaching effect. But this I can just guess, and admit still haven't found a clear research showing, with clear measures, how bad it really is the leaching effect of tires on soil, how fast it goes, and if there is some way of reducing it to a safe point.

As far as I see, crumb tires are not a good option. Really, associated with cancer, and a huge list of toxicities, easy to inhale, off gassing, etc. I would not like to play soccer and have to breath this material.

I will briefly add, not with the intent to create a new discussion, that I see recycling(as an industry) potentially turning into something not so good. Industry growth in this area is usually related to an increase in waste products, which is most times a negative for society as a whole.

I think you are right Jarret, when you said that the recycling industry is making some things worse. Basically, it clears the faults of an industry that does not think ecologically, producing trash that the world is clearly not able to sustain. There is no way we should expect for all the tires to be recycled and then go to sleep in peace. The situation need dramatic changes, and I guess it is time for the industry to make the change. The tire material need to be redesigned, considering that a huge amount of these tires won't find a correct place for recycling. And also, proper recycling of tires is not easy. The correct transformation of tires in fuel does not seem to be cheap, so that in many places an incorrect transformation would take place. And that, apart from fuel (mostly used in cement factories) , the main end use for tires remains ground rubber (not good for health or nature).

I think we should be writing some kind of letter, or manifesting against the production of such a toxic product. But research is necessary, so we've already started that movement, at least.
On another hand, we don't need to stop reusing tires, but should know more about it's problems, and bring in the discussion about redesigning the product, which goes along with the permacultural struggle for a circular economy.

Thanks for the attention again, feeling more welcome to discuss these topics here. See ya

Hi people, first sorry for my English (I'm from Brasil). The deal is, having read some stuff about toxicity of tires, and that it should not be used for producing edible vegetables because of it's leaching effect on the soil and water; or even studies concerning dangerous uses of rubber crumb on soccer fields and playgrounds (check this for more info: http://www.plasticfieldsfornever.org/turf_report07.pdf).
Considering all this info, i would really like to understand if some uses of reused tire are really interesting, such as using it for leveling the ground, burying it for ecological sanitary uses or for building house walls with it. Any info you know about it, and if is there a conclusion on whether there is a safe use for reused tires, will be very welcome!