One Nigerian Entrepreneur's Solution For Millions of Old Tires | World Wide Waste | Business Insider

This is one of Nigeria's first tire recycling businesses. Workers start by ripping out the steel wires so the rubber can be cut, shredded, and turned into bricks for driveways and playgrounds. This is softer and actually a bit bouncier. Ifetolapo Runchewe started free recycle back in 2018. Now, her company recycles hundreds of tires per day. We have over 400,000 tires stockpiled on site. But it's only a tiny slice of the problem. Humans throw out around a billion tires every year. Recycling them gets expensive and complicated. So in most countries, they just pile up in landfills. And here in Nigeria, they can help spread malaria. We have stagnant water that can then become a breeding ground for mosquitoes. So why is it so hard to recycle tires? And why are tire graveyards so dangerous? More than half of all the cars in Nigeria are in and around its biggest city, Lagos. So there's a good chance old tires will end up with a roadside mechanic like Samwe. Maybe you are going on the road, you have flat tire, I will repair it for you. He saves any tire he can't fix to sell to free recycle. Samwe and other shop owners, like Adams, make about 30 cents for each tire. Today's haul will be stored in the lot behind free recycle's two and a half acre facility. When Efetolapa wanted to launch the business, no one believed she could make money out of a pile of tires. It kind of looked at us like we were crazy, and generally that was the reaction. But now she has more than 100 full-time employees, and the business makes about 16 cents for every recycled tire. My first tire, the first baby was recycled in October 2020. The first challenge is removing the steel wires embedded within the rubber. So one of her first investments was this machine called the D-Beater, which removes them in about 20 seconds. Next, the tires head to this chopper, which cuts each one into four or five pieces, making them easier to work with. The company can process about 150 car tires per hour. The same things that make tires durable also make them hard to recycle. In the 1800s, Charles Goodyear accidentally dropped rubber treated with sulfur onto a stove and discovered a process to harden the material called vulcanization. It made rubber stronger and resistant to extreme temperatures. Exactly what cars need out of tires. As more Americans started driving, rubber production exploded in the early 20th century. And most of it came from plantations in Southeast Asia. And then World War II happened. The verdict is in on rubber. The enemy now has over 90% of the world's source of raw rubber. The Allies needed a lot of rubber for trucks, cars, and planes. The U.S. asked its major manufacturers to find an additional source. Synthetic rubber. One of wartime's newest industries. One of America's modern miracles. Today's tires are a blend of natural and synthetic rubber, reinforced with metal and plastic fibers to make them more durable. But no matter how tough they are, they don't last forever. And all of the old rubber quickly piled up. By the end of the 20th century, the U.S. had accumulated well over a billion old tires. In landfills, they can leach toxins. And when buried, they can sometimes trap methane or other gases and literally float to the surface. They also burn fairly easily. In 1987, about 30 acres of tires caught fire in Colorado. It took almost a week to put them out. And the incident brought this kind of waste into the national spotlight. Within a few years, all but two states passed laws that helped fund a new tire scrap industry. By 2021, the U.S. had reduced the number of stockpiled tires to just 50 million. Now, America burns a third of its used tires to fuel cement kilns and paper mills. And another third are turned into rubber surfaces, like artificial turf. Less than 20% ends up in landfills. But in developing countries like Nigeria, tire waste is still a growing problem. The country ranks in the bottom 10% worldwide for recycling and sustainability. But Free Recycle is aiming to change that. At the factory outside of Lagos, the shredder rips tires into chunks. These drums crush them into even smaller pieces. Workers rake the remnants over vibrating screens. And large vacuums prevent rubber dust from filling the factory air. Pieces 5 millimeters and smaller fall through. Larger chunks go back through the process and get crushed again. Magnets pull out any remaining metal shards. These are reinforcement fibers, usually made of plastic, nylon, or some other synthetic material. Now, all that remains is rubber. The final vibrating screen separates the different sizes. Powder, which will give a softer feel suitable for playgrounds and gyms, and 3 to 5 millimeter crumbles, which are durable enough to use for driveways. To make those pavers, rubber crumbs twirl inside heated mixers. A polyurethane binder helps hold everything together. It took a long time to figure out the right ratio that could work in Nigeria's tropical savanna climate. A mix or a formulation that would work in, let's say, Europe wouldn't necessarily work here. So, you know, you just have to find what works best. Dyes adjust the color. A small layer of the colored mixture goes into the mold first. Then the rest of the brick is filled in with undyed rubber mix, which helps cut down on manufacturing costs. Then it is pressed down by hand and loaded onto trays. After loading it, it's being rolled to the hydraulic press, where we press all the mixed material for proper compression. Finally, it sits in an oven to dry for up to eight hours. Nigeria's unreliable electric grid means the factory has to make most of the power it uses. 80% of our power is generated internally from diesel power generating sets. Workers tap the dried pavers out of the molds. On a typical day, they make roughly enough pieces to cover an entire tennis court. Every tire produces about 25 of these dog-bone-shaped rubber bricks. Now they're ready to ship. Scrap tires have become a $12 billion global industry. In the U.S., Europe, and Japan, most get recycled and many are burned to create energy. Tire-based fuel costs less than natural gas and burns cleaner than coal. But it still produces emissions comparable to other fossil fuels. In another method called pyrolysis, tires are heated to extreme temperatures without oxygen. Advocates claim it's the cleanest way to recycle them. But it requires a lot of energy, leaving small profit margins. In the U.S., a third of recycled tires become new surfaces in homes and playgrounds, or mulch for gardens. In response to public concerns about shredded rubber leaking toxins, one U.S. federal agency said it couldn't prove there were any health risks. But it recommended that kids should not eat the rubber. Sound advice. Back in Lagos, Free Recycle's top-selling items are paving stones used in playgrounds like this one at an international school. We've been very happy with their service. The product's good. The thick rubber provides a nice bounce for children at play, but also makes repairs and additions easier. If you want to add more services or add more structures, you just remove it, and when you're finished, put it back. While Free Recycle aims to eliminate all of Nigeria's tire dumps, for now, this waste stream is still growing. But that's not Ifetalapo's only concern. The mother of two is raising a family and a business together. She says Free Recycle is on the verge of becoming profitable, and she continues building it brick by brick. I think she's like a natural fixer. She saw a problem, she found a solution. Charming, but she's disturbingly efficient. She plans to expand throughout the country, as well as Rwanda, Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Kenya. I would like to see us tackling more waste, different types of waste, your paper waste, electronic waste, pet bottle. That's why our tagline is Waste to Wealth.