Kitsap Tire Round-Up

By the numbers the free tire recycling project (see photo) at the Olympic View Industrial Park on SR 3 is already a big success. According to the Kitsap Sun more than 10,000 tires have been collected so far and the event has another week to go.

Of course tire recycling isn’t really free even if people taking advantage of it don’t pay anything at the drop-off site. As reported in the Kitsap Sun, Kitsap County has a contract with Tire Disposal and Recycling of Auburn to collect and recycle the tires. A grant of $45,000 from the Washington Department of Ecology is supporting the project. Ecology, in turn, gets its money from taxpayers.

While all of us are ultimately paying for this, it sounds like a good use of tax money. Recycled tires can be used in making a variety of products, including asphalt, mulch, certain types of fuels, and even new tires.

Tires illegally dumped in the environment can be a health hazard especially if they catch on fire.

Disposing of tires in landfills isn’t a good solution either. They take up too much space, don’t decompose, and can trap methane gas. Even in well-lined landfills, scrap tires can contribute to ground water pollution.

So kudos to a program that helps reduce the number of waste tires in storage. My only question is where the old tires are coming from.

I currently own two cars and 10 tires, one of which is flat. If the local Les Schwab tire center cannot repair it, I will buy a new tire there and leave the old one with them for recycling. The only time I have ever owned any “extra” tires was when I bought a pair of snow tires for my Honda Accord. I passed them on to the new owner when I sold the car.

I don’t know anyone with more than five tires per vehicle. But apparently there are (or were) plenty of people in Kitsap County with tires to recycle. I learned this yesterday when I stopped by the tire round-up on my way to Treasure Island.

While I was there, a steady stream of pickup trucks kept arriving to drop off tires. Perhaps the tires had been stored in sheds, garages, basements, back yards, or out in the south forty. Whatever the case, there were plenty of customers.

After getting checked in by a guy with a clipboard, the drivers backed their trucks up to the loading doors of one of the six semi-trailers at the site, tossed in their tires, and drove off. The process was efficient and quick. I’m not sure what I was expecting to see. Perhaps a sprawling mountain of tires? It wasn’t like that.

So is the recycling project making a significant dent in Kitsap’s old tire supply? It has to be. But we’ll probably need to do it again in a few years.