Mr. LH and I had dinner over at a friend’s house the other night and their 3-year-old had just received a jungle gym as a birthday present from the grandparents. As he was jumping on and off the swing, he picked up what looked like a wood chip and said, “There’s an E.” His mom was surprised he recognized the letter, and I was baffled by why he was saying there was any print on the “wood chips” at all. Turns out the brown chips weren’t wood chips but recycled, shredded tires instead! What an ingenious idea!
Of course, once she told me this, my own curiosity led me to pick through the tire chips to find words or letters, which completely intrigued her 3-year old. (It’s always funny how kids are interested in the extraneous elements of a gift. 😉 ). Apparently companies that are re-purposing old tires into tire mulch offers the mulch in different colors. The tires have been washed in some fashion, removed of any metals and shredded to form a soft cushion. I read up on this a little and there are some environmentalists who think this may not be the safest alternative for children. However, I don’t see anything wrong with it as long as the kid’s not eating it or rolling around in it. (Perhaps he just needs to stop picking it up and reading it!)
It definitely beats old tires ending up in landfills taking up space.
Have you seen shredded tires in common or play areas? Would you use this as an alternative to a playground padding?
13 Comments
I think I saw somewhere where Old Navy (or some other store?) will take your old flip-flops and they’re going to recycle all the rubber parts into playground mulch. Tires are a great idea too!
I’ve seen these too, never realized they were recycled tires! Ingenious indeed!
Neat, although I don’t understand how they can get green mulch out of black tires. They must have to mix it with something else.
@First Gen American – They dye it somehow. There were a couple of different colored tire chips in my friend’s batch of tire mulch. I can say that whatever they do to it, it was really clean, not like old dirty tires at all. I’m sure chemicals are involved somehow, but it’s still a terrific recycling idea.
We saw this stuff at a home show last year. So cool! There are also planters you can get for your yard made out of recycled milk cartons. I think these kinds of things are great and I would totally use the rubber stuff for a play area.
@Miss T – I love recycled ideas and would like to see what the recycled milk carton planters look like. I believe that it takes less energy to recycle plastic back into plastic, which is a great way to reduce our garbage and recreate with the materials we’re already using.
What a great idea! Recycling is yield all sorts of interesting products. Normally, empty plastic bottles would become plastic bottles again. I was watching a show on MSNBC where they recycled bottles to make material for clothes. I think the future holds many new uses for recycling.
Sorry to burst your balloon, but I heard a story a while back about these recycled tired. Apparently they break down into dust eventually and those dust are really really bad for your lung. They probably want to research a bit more into this.
@Retire by Forty -Well that’s a bummer. I inspected the shredded tires when I was looking for “letters” with my friend’s son and it seemed pretty durable, but I guess that wear and tear could potentially break down the rubber over time. I guess I’ll have to reinspect the padding in a year or so and see how it’s holding up. Hopefully my friends did their research and know what kind of life expectancy they’re looking at.
I’m not sure about the health impact either, but hey at least they’re trying. Definitely should do some more testing though, lest the companies get caught up in some major lawsuits later on.
I’ve seen this before, and must admit its pretty great. The stuff is much better than sand or gravel (it wont get in your shoes) and disposing of spare tires is very difficult – in my area if you’re taking a load to the dump, having a spare tire is basically the “kiss of death”
I have not seen this before but think it is a great idea! I imagine this material would be soft for children to run on and if they fell, it would probably not be as bad as on other materials. I would like to find more info on the possible environmental impacts or if there are any harmful effects on children. Thanks for the post!!
Cool idea. I haven’t heard of this before. I think it is a terrific idea.