The Border Environment Cooperation Commission is seeking private sector solutions to one of the U.S.- Mexico border’s most vexing problems – how to dispose of used tires that are piled by the millions in storage yards all along the border.

      BECC is a bi-national agency, funded by both the U.S. and Mexican governments. Its mission is to help develop and certify environmental infrastructure projects that improve the quality of life of people in the U.S.-Mexico border region.

      BECC General Manager Daniel Chacón told U.S. and Mexican legislators recently that scrap tires are a bi-national problem, because the dangers they pose can affect people in both countries and because so many of the tires that wind up in Mexican storage yards come from the United States.

      The United States generates about 280 million used tires a year and exports about 5 percent of them. In Mexico and other countries some of these become affordable replacement tires for private vehicles, but, due to their poor condition, are often quickly discarded. With other tires in even worse condition, the discards wind up in enormous piles that become habitat for mosquitoes and rodents, which spread disease. Left laying for years the tires can contaminate soils and water, and become the fuel for fires touched off by accident or arson, Chacón said.

      Yet, scrap tires potentially have many uses, he added.

    Besides their utility as retreads, other methods of reusing or disposing of the tires are:  civil engineering applications, such as using them for structural backfill or erosion control; applications using their ground rubber; incineration of whole tires and shredded tires as tire derived fuel (TDF), which is frequently used in cement plants; using either whole or shredded tires as landfill; and gasification and pyrolysis, which use intense heat to break the tires into their component elements, which may then be...

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