Rubber hits the road on Alcoa tyre recycling - Australian Mining

Oct 16, 2024

Old tyres are being given a new life thanks to a new Alcoa tyre recycling project in partnership with Tyrecycle’s newly established East Rockingham facility.

The off-the-road (OTR) haul truck tyres that have reached the end of their operational life are being sent from Alcoa’s bauxite mines in the Peel and south west regions of Western Australia to the local Tyrecycle facility where they are processed to create a crumbed rubber product.

The resulting product can be used for a variety of applications including as a crumbed rubber-modified bitumen, and a range of soft-surface applications such as those used on athletics tracks and in playgrounds.

Alcoa global program manager, water and waste Nicole King said the recycling project had been a long time in the making and was the culmination of significant collaboration between Alcoa and Tyrecycle.

“We wanted to be sure our end-of-life OTR tyres were being managed and generating products that support our waste management objectives,” King said.

“We have set ourselves the global goal of a 25 per cent reduction in landfilled waste by 2030 from a 2015 baseline.

“OTR tyres are a significant material stream for our WA mining operations, and recycling end-of-life tyres will make a contribution towards achieving our goal.”

According to Tyrecycle, 130,000 tonnes of OTR tyres reach their end of life in Australia each year and less than 10 per cent of these are being recycled, posing a considerable environmental challenge.

Tyrecycle chief executive officer Jim Fairweather said the East Rockingham facility is Australia’s largest and most flexible tyre recycling facility, catering for OTR tyres as well as commercial and passenger tyres.

“Our partnership with Alcoa marks our first contracted agreement with a south west mining operator to recycle OTR tyres,” Fairweather said.

“Tyrecycle’s goal is to deliver sustainable outcomes for our clients, where waste is a resource, not a problem and we are proud to have established this state-of-the-art facility in the Rockingham region with strong support from government and industry.”

King said Alcoa is investigating recycling solutions for other rubber products including end of life conveyer belts, as well as looking at opportunities to use the crumbed rubber product at Alcoa facilities.

“We are considering opportunities to use some of the rubber crumb from Tyrecycle in roadworks around our operations,” she said.

“Doing so would represent a great outcome with our own tyres being recycled into rubber crumb and repurposed within our own operations.”

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