A building one and a half kilometers high with a base equal to that of a sports field and weighing more than 20 super aircraft carriers. This is the image that describes the volume of tires disposed of, recycled and reused, in various forms, in Italy and which is worth around 60 million euros per year.
The consortium
An area that goes from the production of energy to the construction of asphalts and brings together over 100 companies, 700 direct employees and a network of 25,000 affiliated tire dealers working in the various regions. Numbers of a growing sector and contained in the balance sheet on the first ten years of Ecopneus, a non-profit consortium company and main operator in the management of end-of-life tires in Italy. The data that emerge from the balance sheet, as Giovanni Corbetta (who has led Ecopneus since its establishment) explains “are the result of a far-sighted strategy that over the years has made it possible to build a system based on quality, competence and innovation, involving all stakeholders of the system: from citizens to institutions, to companies in the treatment chain and from the recycling sectors, to research bodies, associations ».
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Ten years of activity
Since 2011, the company has handled 2,220,090 tons of end-of-life tires “like the weight of 20 super aircraft carriers”, with an annual average of 200,000 tons, “the equivalent by weight of about 22 million automobile tires” . The annual growth of 6 per cent was also certified thanks to “130 thousand tons more than the legal targets”, and over 700 thousand collection missions in the 25 thousand tire dealers registered throughout the country. In addition, what the leaders of the group define as an “extraordinary commitment” for “interventions in historical stocks and for the extraordinary removal of tires abandoned in the territories of the Terra dei Fuochi, for a total of 87 thousand tons taken”.
The economic value
The economic impact is significant. “On average, the value distributed each year by Ecopneus to the various components of the supply chain is approximately 60 million euros, and mainly serves to remunerate companies for recovery operations, from collection to transport, to the treatment of end-of-life tires – says Federico Dossena Ecopneus general manager -. Overall, from 2011 to date, we have generated an economic value of 624 million euros, of which 611 have been distributed to our stakeholders. But a very important figure is represented by the savings we have allowed the country on the import of raw materials, thanks to their replacement with the recycled materials of end-of-life tires obtained from the Ecopneus supply chain: 1.15 billion euros “.
Use of recycled rubber
The second life of rubber from end-of-life tires ranges from the energy sector to the construction and road sectors. Specifically, 48 percent of the tires collected over the ten years were “destined for energy recovery”, while 52 percent “was sent to material recovery to produce mainly rubber granules and powders used in the various application sectors” . Which in this case range from sports flooring (50 per cent), to products and components (29 per cent), continuing with rubber articles (8 per cent), acoustic insulation for buildings (7 per cent) and low-noise asphalts (3 percent) “.