What Happens To Used Tires? | Free Documentary Shorts

[Music] around the world 3 300 used tires are produced every minute this is a huge problem for the environment one which every country deals with differently the emission norms are maybe stricter in europe worldwide the industry is looking for solutions to reuse old tires but what exactly does this look like under what conditions do companies recycle our old tires and who profits from this our mission today what happens to used tires to find out we start our research trip in kuwait city because here in the middle of the arabian desert we can find the biggest tire dump in the world on an area of more than one square kilometer the kuwaitis collect used for months we've been asking for filming permission we're only allowed access under one condition the landfill commissioner of the government saba faye accompanies us come from the uh shop for change that tire at kuwait collected here there is six or seven million in this area for safety then make a recycle for the time [Music] yeah it's the danger because not go after maybe 500 years or more yeah but in undertale the problem is not unknown but what are the q80 people doing about it we haven't seen anyone working on the landfill let alone recycling [Music] now my planning i am from municipality of kuwait my job collected this tire after there is a plant for the department to make a plant for a metal recycle now chose the the area to make this blood nothing really happens here and hasn't for years the country hasn't recycled a single tire itself but then why do they collect them in business but for the environment when dinner only td he won't tell us from whom and why after the first three questions the interview is declared closed under the pretext of wanting to take some more pictures of tyres we're allowed to film alone on the premises and then we discover a few people who are actually working obviously something is happening here some pakistani and indian immigrants assaulting tyres by size but we're also being watched the manager of a private company has discovered us we politely ask for an interview and he actually agrees a few months ago he bought a million tires for a lot of money but even this company doesn't recycle them itself we are dealing directly with the factories there so some of the factories they are using them to make from rubber yeah and some factories they are extracting the fuel apparently somebody does make money with the old tires after all the workers shred the tires into tiny pieces and send them all over the world in containers but one thing is clear to us in kuwait they have not yet found their own solution when it comes to recycling huge mountains of old tyres this is not the way to be this is a waste they shouldn't sell it they should think about it not commercially but environmentally this is what this is our point of view this is a disaster and if they are thinking about it commercially okay this is this will cost more problems however he also earns his money with the old tires his company is currently the only one actively involved in the dismantling of the landfill it'll probably take years to recycle all the tyres from the world's largest tyre mountain nothing is happening here yet and that's why we're traveling to the world market leader in scrap tire recycling this mission takes us to vyborg in denmark the company has developed its own process to recycle scrap tires almost completely a closely guarded secret plant manager lars rahalga is nevertheless willing to give us an insight hello hello welcome to gaming thank you very much nice to meet you the dane's secret about used tires is indeed strictly guarded it's like fort knox yeah that's right please come in lars rawhauger leads us into the delivery area first about 25 000 tires arrive here every day mostly from denmark scandinavia and england it's definitely not waste tires are made of the very best materials the very best rubber steel and textile and it's a big big waste not to recycle the tires and produce new raw materials only the best materials go into tyres after all they have to withstand extreme conditions on the road but that's exactly what makes them so difficult to recycle but the company has invented a unique method to do just that so it's not possible to show me the whole process no absolutely not we are very careful about that only a very very few people are admitted to our plan the rubber is cooled down using like liquid nitrogen minus 119 degrees celsius and because of this soap becomes very cold it's more easy to crush into the very very fine powder what comes out of the machine in the end is equivalent to new rubber so old tires are turned into the basic material for new ones we have a good grip about tile recycling in europe but in the third world this is a really big problem also because that we in the rich world are exporting used tires to the third world because they still have a little bit of rubber left so we have in we have enjoyed the tire for most of the lifetime but the poor country get the waste problem which i believe is not quite ethical once the tires leave europe nobody can check what happens to them we research and find a tire recycler in india who claims to be the largest recycler in the country using state-of-the-art technology and is based in mumbai the biggest city in a country that isn't exactly known for being a pioneer in environmental protection we are curious about what to expect because the company allegedly produces fuel from scrap tires in the form of diesel drive to an industrial area just outside mumbai on the company premises we meet vishesh agawam the boss of the company get a material mostly from europe and different countries sell us different kind of material so this material let's say comes in from italy and belgium and we have different other type of material like full tires coming in which comes in from germany and these tires then go through the full processing to produce diesel from used tires the company heats them in a reactor this process is called pyrolysis tyre rubber consists of 65 petroleum a valuable raw material that the company wants to recover to prevent the tyres inside the reactor from sticking a worker throws magnesium against the wall we know this from climbing for example and it's not dangerous however the salt that's produced when it melts is dangerous and it's in the air constantly it contains a lot of carbon the world health organization therefore classifies it as potentially carcinogenic after loading the process is finally supposed to start the machine is defective and we have to be patient it can happen after all the company is currently setting up several new machines but while we're filming the repair work we unintentionally record the following conversation via the boss's microphone normal i don't think they have so much into problem about this dirtiness and all right they're not filming that it's not about their problem it's about our plan being looking clean in the video that's it how do they care they are not pollution control people that they're going to have reason enough to take a closer look around and this whole thing here doesn't have much to do with environmental awareness and it gets worse only 50 meters from the machines we discover this hut apparently people live here in the middle of the factory site and in the middle of the dirt do you think do you think it's it's healthy for them to live here next to this oil things uh they don't live here they live on the outside okay they water for the construction but they're in this houses they live there right in those houses yeah no though that's temporary accommodation only for the construction phase okay the construction workers and then they'll be shifted to the houses aha temporary accommodation the idea to recover the oil from old tires is actually a good one but the implementation here in india is poor above all we wonder what impact this process has on people and the environment [Music] you can see the the reactor is running now and there is no pollution because there is good equipment for treating the pollution but there is something coming out what is it hot air like like when you burn the natural gas what comes out after burning natural gas the same emissions are from the pyrolysis plants it's completely pollution air pollution free that's not quite true we've spoken to experts from germany who confirmed that this plant is a somewhat outdated model where even sulfur can end up in the air dangerous for people and the environment nevertheless in india it's allowed [Music] the the emission norms are maybe stricter in europe and as a as a collective you know there's a collective decision that they will not allow pyrolysis to prove to us that the old tyres really have become fueled the boss pours it into his motorbike melting down used tires to obtain fuel has not yet become established in europe however experts are researching this technology and trying to develop the process further but how is the problem of used tyres dealt with in germany we travel to burglandenfeld near reagan's border where we visit one of the oldest and largest cement plants in germany but what does cement have to do with our used tyres [Music] daniel schmidt is technical manager at the plant cement burning is an energy intensive process that requires extreme heat [Music] the factory goes through about 30 tons of rubber per day the rubber in the used tyres has the same calorific value as coal i.e one ton of tyres is equivalent to one tonne of coal approximately this helps us save our primary fuel to burn cement the company normally fires the kilns with coal and plastic waste the used tires can save up to 10 percent of the coal the tyres then burn together with limestone in the rotary kiln this produces cement which we use for example when building houses the advantage is that the steel from the tyres melts with the cement and makes it stronger is there anything left over from the tyre [Music] the flame temperature is 2000 degrees and the material has about 1450 when it gets here so there's no rubber or metal left of the tires so the tyres serve as fuel and for hardening the cement the only problem is that cement works cause about three times as much pollution as all air traffic that's why only factories with professional pollution control are allowed to burn tyres nevertheless rubber is a precious material which can be used to make so much more the conclusion of our mission recycling used tires is a problem worldwide simply burning the valuable materials may not be the worst solution however the best solution for our scrap tires is currently being provided by the danes with their approach to recycling

Channel: Free Documentary - Shorts

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Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full documentary, HD documentary, Short Documentary, Short Docs, Documentary (TV Genre), Documentary - topic, Doc Bites, Free Documentary Shorts, Tires, Car Tires, Used Tires, Environment, What Happens To Our Waste, Waste, Recycling, Fridays For Future, Greenpeace, environmental problems, Pollution, Microplastic, Litter, garbage, Extinction Rebellion, Stop Pollution, Al Gore, leonardo dicaprio, an inconvenient truth, Old Tires

Id: y0ah6QZpI3M

Length: 14min 49sec (889 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 05 2021