Thanks!
jz

Now if you want to use rubber mulch for permanent walkways or driveways... then have at it. Make sure you're doing the environment a favor by checking to see if it is from recycled materials first.

Bill

If I buried a tire in my yard and a neighbor told the town- I bet I'd have an issue.

One good use I've seen for old tires is where they slash them, stack them up, cable them together, weight them down with cinder blocks and drop them in the ocean. They act as habitat for fishies in areas where drag-netting, storms, and other problems have damaged ocean floor habitat.

I've also seen rubber mulch edging mats that would be great to use as mowing strips next to your garden beds.

It's fabulous for playgrounds! I wish we'd had the stuff when I was little at my school yard.

If it's not a mat, but rather a ground up stuff you spread, then it will have the same problem that other mulches do, which is that it will suppress weeds underneath, but eventually dirt and seeds and stuff will fall on top of it and weeds will grow on top of it, and then what will you do?

It's not solid. And I think you need to see it in action before assuming. Other mulches are organic in nature and hold water and nutrients and can sometimes be inviting for seeds to sprout, but less so then an expanse of soil.

Of course debris will blow into the mulch, whether it be wood chips, rubber, or gravel, that's part of life and nature. But if the mulch is in an active area, few seedlings ever see a long life of happieness after getting trampled to death. I just went to a nursery last week that is using it in their walkways. It's fantasti - or at least fun to walk on, and it looked like rock.

Well, actually, I was thinking of stone, and I don't think that's exactly an ideal place for weeds to sprout, but a lot of folks around here have it and afer a few years they're right back to the weed problem except they can't just till in the mulch or dump more bark mulch on top.

I agree that on paths this would not be a problem. In a way it seems great for paths as long as you can really keep it in place. And of course on paths you don't really care that it's not adding anything to the soil, do you? And I completely agree that if it's anything like the playground stuff it's really nice to walk on.

2 years ago I tried to make a little stream for a pond I was building so I put down black plastic and covered with with a little dirt to hold it down. WELL that little bit of dirt ended up being more and more dirt, and now that I want that black plastic gone I cannot get rid of it, Its very difficult to remove once it is down.

Maybe rubber mulch is different I don't know but keep in mind when you don't want it anymore you are going to need to dispose of it or give it away to someone, Where an organic mulch will go away on it's own. I guess thats some people argument FOR rubber mulch is that is lasts forever, but in my opinion not a good thing. I know I change my mind too much.

I understand where your coming from but I like to think that the consumer has their head on straight and researches the product and asks those questions before they make a purchase.

The recycling process is supposed to remove the vast majority of contaminants associated with tires. It should also be treated and sealed as well. Therefore, Rubber Mulch will not pollute groundwater or pose an environmental hazard. Do your research as mentioned above, make sure you check the specific manufacturer.

www.paghat.com/rubbermulch.html

kimmsr,

I never said that.

It's sealed with a colored coating that is non-toxic. And I don't like the shredded stuff that resembles "bark". I like the stuff that looks like stone.

Guys, I'm just as skeptical as the rest of you, but in this case I'm more open to it because I believe there are far worse things being sprayed on our produce we buy at the grocery store.

Again, I personally would never use it to mulch plants.

If anyone is seriously that worried about tire pollution, they should start writing the auto industries, tire manufactures, senators, congressmen, and do Public Service Announcements to educate the public that every time they drive their car the tires are "wearing" off directly onto the surface of this earth. That if they don't maintain correct tire pressure on a monthly basis, rotate tires regularly, drive at appropriate speeds, and avoid speed changes, fuel consumption and emission is greater and tires wear out faster which adds more tires to the tire pile.

"If an alien were to land on earth, the first thing he would notice about the "green planet"is the amount of cars there are on the streets. He would see that they come in all shapes and sizes, colors and are of many different brands. He would attempts to count the cars, but would get lost quickly because no brain can comprehend a number so large. In 1900 there were only 4,192 passenger cars built in the US (the only country to be manufacturing cars). There were no buses or trucks. By 1985 there were 109 million cars in existence. Today, with dozens of countries participating in the creation of automobiles, that number is six times larger.

It is estimated that there are approximately 600 million motor vehicles being driven on the streets of earth, the alien would be dumbfounded with this number. The biggest manufacturers are Japan, producing 8,056,000 cars in 1998, the US, with 5,554,000, and Germany with 5,348,000. With passing time, these numbers experience a rapid growth. For example, in 1960 Japan produced 185,000 cars, but by the end of the 1990s it was producing nearly 10 million a year. It is believed that at this growth rate, the number of cars on earth will double within the next 30 years. In this time scientists predict that traffic congestion will become 10 times worse than it is today. If in 2001 it is difficult to cross a major street without having to wait five minutes for the traffic to stop, how long will one have to wait in 2050?

Today the alien will notice that with such a large number of cars and people on earth, there are approximately ten people per car. But what will happen when he returns for a second trip in a hundred years? Will there be as many cars as people, or maybe by that time we'll have discovered a new method of transportation that is much more efficient and eco-friendly than the car? Only time can tell.

Marina Stasenko -- 2001"
Source: The Physics Factbook.

Now multiply those numbers at least four (more for trucks and trailers) and multiply again x3 for average number of sets of tires per car.

"...the average lifetime per passenger car is 126,678 miles. Thus, currently the average car would have 3 sets of tires on their car over its lifetime (new, at 45,000 miles, and at 90,000 miles) and with TPMS the average car would have 3 sets of tires purchased (new, at 47,736 miles, and at 95,472 miles)."
Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (2001).

The content of hazardous material in tires is certainly available.

"What makes up a tire?
Tires are composed of natural rubber from rubber trees, synthetic rubber made from petrochemical feedstocks, carbon black, extender oils, steel wire, up to 17 heavy metals, other petrochemicals and chlorine.

* Synthetic rubber often contains the organic chemicals styrene and butadiene. Styrene, a benzene derivative, is a suspected human carcinogen.
* Butadiene is known to cause cancer in laboratory animals and is a suspected human carcinogen. Studies show a strong association between leukemia and butadiene.
* Extender oils contain benzene based compounds which cause cancer in laboratory animals. Crude oil contains heavy metals, including, but not limited to, lead, chromium, cadmium, and mercury.
* A coal and tire chlorine content comparison showed that tires may contain as much as 2 to 5 times the chlorine level of western coal. The coal averaged a chlorine weight of .04% and tires showed a weight range of .07 to .2 percent.".
Source: Health Impacts of Burning Tires

"Automobile tires are composed of carbon black reinforced rubber. Typical composition of tires is 62% styrene butadiene copolymer rubber, 31% carbon black, and other materials, such as extender oils, sulfur, zinc oxide and stearic acid, which are present in smaller amounts."
Source: Center for Environmental Science and Technology, University of Missouri-Rolla

"Typical Tire Composition:
Styrene Butadiene - 46.78%
Carbon Black - 45.49%
Aromatic Oil - 1.74%
Zinc Oxide - 1.40%
Astearic Acid - 0.94%
Antioxidant 6C - 1.40%
Wax - 0.23%
Sulfur - 1.17%
Accelerator CZ - 0.75%"
Source: Effects of Waste Tires, Waste Tire Facilities, and Waste Tire Project on the Environment

Does anyone use a washing machine with any common laundry detergent from the local store? It is proven that the chemicals in detergent used with the water we use and recycle thru Public Works have a direct environmental impact in our lakes and rivers which in turn directly effects wildlife and humans who drink water. They contain endocrine disrupters which has already been "...linked to impotency and premature puberty in both sexes... The hormone disrupts the endocrine system, upsetting the balance of the body's natural hormone levels".

"Detergents interfere with the ability of frogs to breathe through their skin, and tadpoles to breathe through their gills. Michael J. Tyler of the Department of Zoology at the University of Adelaide, Australia".
Source: Endocrine Disrupters

As long as humans are living on this planet, we're going to affect this world one way or another. Most of us are probably not going to become homesteaders or Amish so we're going to use resources that are not environemtally friendly like using electricity to power a lightbulb in our house which is commonly created by burning coal and oil.

"A major contributor to the green house effect is carbon dioxide, which is produced from the combustion of fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) in vehicles, industrial boilers and residential furnaces. The average car pumps two to three times its own weight in carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year."
Source: Drive Green - Environmental Guide to Driving

I have some amount of faith in technology today. It's easy get a sod cutter, lay black plastic down, then pour the mulch on top if anyone is worried about leeching. This is no different than useing treated wood for a vegetable garden and covering it with black plastic or growing potatoes in a stack of lined tires. Heck, it may be even better since the rubber itself is sealed. It's a thin layer so it's easy to maintain. 80 mile an hour winds don't spread it to different locations.

"The average passenger car tire measures about 26 inches across, but take away just a quarter-inch of tread and it becomes an accident waiting to happen.

The United States, like the rest of the industrialized world, goes through a lot of tires. Approximately one tire is discarded per person each year. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 250 million scrap tires are generated in the United States each year, not counting another 45 million scrap tires that are used to make 34.5 million automobile and truck tire retreads every year.

Until the 1960s, rubber from scrap tires was routinely recycled, but that started to change as cheap oil imports �" the raw material behind synthetic rubber �" made reclaimed rubber less valuable, and the spread of steel belted tires made tire recycling more expensive, difficult and time-consuming.

As so often proves true when waste makes short-term economic sense, the long-term consequences of wasting scrap tires began to accumulate.

Scrap tires not only waste landfill space, they can damage the linings put in place to keep groundwater and surface water from mixing with landfilled contaminants. Tires discarded illegally �" individually as litter or collectively in clandestine tire dumps �" are an eyesore and a drag on surrounding property values. They also pose threats to public health and safety.

Tire dumps provide excellent breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and elevated incidents of mosquito-borne diseases have been noted near large tire piles.

[Bloody-thirsty invader
There are about two hundred species of mosquito in the United States and Canada; 43 of them can carry West Nile Virus. One exotic species, the aggressive Asian Tiger Mosquito (Aedes albopictus), arrived in Texas in a shipment of used tires from Japan. By 1996, Asian Tiger Mosquitoes had reached Ohio.]

Tire pile fires have been an even greater environmental problem. Tire pile fires can burn for months, sending up an acrid black plume that can be seen for dozens of miles. That plume contains toxic chemicals and air pollutants, just as toxic chemicals are released into surrounding water supplies by oily runoff from tire fires. Fighting a tire pile fire is not only futile in some cases, it can actually make the pollution problem worse.

In Ohio, the last straw came in 1999, when a 140-acre tire dump in northeastern Ohio burned for five days, disgorging a column of toxic smoke that could be seen 60 miles away and releasing oil into a nearby creek, killing thousands of fish in the Sandusky River system."
Source: Ohio Department of Natural Resources

"Notable Tire Fires

* In 1983, a 7-million tire fire in Rhinehart, Virginia issued a plum of smoke 3,000 feet high and nearly 50 miles long with air pollution emissions deposited in three states. The fire burned for nine months, polluting nearby water sources with lead and arsenic. The tire storage facility where the fire occurred is now being cleaned-up as a Superfund site.

* In 1999, a lightning strike ignited a tire fire in Westley, California. The tire dump contained millions of scrap tires located in a canyon in a coastal mountain range. The large smoke plume from the fire impacted nearby farming communities and caused widespread concern of potential health affects from exposure to the smoke emissions. The tire fire also produced large volumes of pyrolitic oil that flowed off the slope and into the drainage of an intermittent stream. This oil was ignited too and the oil fire significantly increased the smoke emissions close to ground level. A response to the oil and tire fires was beyond the capabilities of local and state agencies. The EPA regional coordinator immediately responded using Oil Pollution Act of 1990 authority. It took 30 days to extinguish the fire. Total EPA response costs were $3.5 million."
Source: Environmental Protection Agency.

Have you seen the houses built of tires?
"The problem with land-filling tires is the enormous volume of discarded tires. Landfill space is very expensive in 1990s America, thereby making the land-filling of tires an expensive disposal alternative. Tires also tend to collect methane in a landfill, become negatively buoyant, and create a physical problem in the landfill. Reusing a tire in an Earthship, where it becomes a beneficial resource, and spends its future in an inert setting is an ideal ultimate use for discarded tires. Large scale private industry does not consider this to be a viable alternative because it is not profitable to them. In order to place the issue of tire off-gassing into perspective, one might consider other common chemicals affecting indoor air quality. Formaldehyde is a chemical used in the manufacture of textiles and carpets commonly located in the living space of human dwellings. It is also classified by NIOSH as a known carcinogen. The vapor pressure of formaldehyde is 470 kPa at standard temperature (CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics). This means that formaldehyde will readily travel into the breathing space of a dwelling, especially when the source (carpet) is located within the occupied space of a dwelling. This is a much more direct pathway of exposure than that of Earthship tires. One further point to be made is that the concentration of carbon black in air can be measured, and standards for acceptable exposure do exist. The NIOSH recommended exposure limit (REL) for carbon black is 3.5 mg/m^3 (ten hour time weighted average). This is a workplace standard, so a lower value would be appropriate for residential situations. A study could be performed in several Earthships of varying age measuring the byproducts of rubber degradation. These results could then be used to perform a risk assessment of the use of tires in Earthships. My intuition is that this risk would be several orders of magnitude lower than the risk posed by activities such as living in a house with new carpet, eating peanut butter, driving a car, or smoking cigarettes. In the absence of such a study, my personal judgment is that the risks of living in a properly designed and constructed Earthship are negligible compared to the environmental benefits of Earthship living.

Chris Kaiser, Alamosa, CO

PS If anyone is interested in looking into this on their own, the CAS# for carbon black is 1333-86-4, and the RTECS# is FF5800000."

Digging acres of holes and dumping used tires in them with no protection or burning them is outright "poisoning of this world". Recycled tires used as mulch can be re-sealed as well which you can do yourself. It significantly reduces playground injuries. You can actually take an egg and drop it from a height of 12 feet and watch it bounce. Anyone who has ever fallen on gravel or asphalt in a playground can appreciate that.

So which is the better of the worse here? The fact is, we have a serious tire problem and it's not going away any time soon. It's an environmental issue no matter how you look at it. At least there are some practical re-use options. Should we tell the recycle companies to take their sealed mulch and shove it back into a hole in the ground? Or tell them to leave the original unsealed tires in the ground to begin with?

I tend to fall on the "there are a lot more worrisome things than rubber mulch" end of the spectrum. I wouldn't use it on my plants, but I'll bet it's great under a swingset.

bluejean
"judge not, lest we be judged"

The following season, when you go to 'clean up things' you have to move this rubber mulch, somehow clean it up, and put it back. Seems like more of a PITA to me...

I just thought it was weird.

Haven't seen that one yet. I'd go for one that looks more natural than not. If you do get it, tell us what you think. It's always hard to tell true color, texture, and feel without seeing it in person.

Good luck,
Sherri

I think I will err on the side of used tire/rubber stuff NOT being a good thing for my garden. I know how hard it was to remove a rock mulch from a flower bed that a previous owner created. I can only imagine how difficult it will be to remove shredded tire mulch when the brilliant minds finally catch up with common sense and decide it's as bad thing on land as it is in our oceans.

Your post is an amazing piece of background research. Like a Doctoral thesis.

Like so many things, the harm are lifestyle does to the Earth is lost in a mountain of trivia.

Who has ever given a moments thought to what happens to a tire?

So instead of dismissing the idea of brown rubber mulch give more careful thought to the alternatives. It seems to me a positive development one that like most things can be found to have problems but what doesn't?

One thing that I have not seen mentioned in these many posts is how terrible it smells on a hot summer day! That, alone, is a good reason for removing it from a playground.

As these crumb particles are decomposed, the many toxic substances will be released into the soil. Thus, not only does this product NOT address the essential biota of a working soil system, but it poisons it.

So, considering the fire hazard, the smell, the toxicity (acute and chronic), and the negative impact on soil macro and micro organisms....I doubt that it will be on the market much longer.

1. When properly installed and maintained, Pinnacle Rubber Mulch provides a playground surface that meets or exceeds U.S. Product Safety Commission guidelines and ASTM Standards for play surfaces.

2. When properly installed and maintained, a 6” depth of Pinnacle Rubber Mulch provides 16’ of fall height protection per ASTM F1292-09.

3. When properly installed and maintained, a depth of 6” of Pinnacle Rubber Mulch is wheel chair accessible per ASTM F1951-99.

4. Rubber Mulch is IPEMA certified for ASTM F1292-04.

5. We use a non-toxic, polyurethane coating chemically cured to the rubber. While the potential for zinc leach from Pinnacle Rubber Mulch is already below the EPA’s Secondary Maximum Contaminate Levels (SMCL), the proprietary chemically-bonded coating reduces zinc leaching and run off by at least 60% when using a constant water flush test method.

6. While there can be a smell when the Rubber Mulch is first installed, it is gone within 1-2 days, regardless of heat or exposure.

Just to mention this as well: When the EPA recommends that children who play outside wash their hands, they clearly state that they recommend that at all times, regardless of the material on which children are playing.

We have installations on many playgrounds throughout North America, and not once has it ever even been suggested that it be removed. Nor have we ever found evidence to support claims that any other brand of rubber mulch was removed for health concerns. Rubber Mulch, Pinnacle Rubber Mulch in particular, is a safe, durable, high-quality product that is a great addition to any Playground or Landscaping project. I suggest you haters out there do a bit more research before making unfounded claims about safety.

I don't say this to be provocative (though I would never use it myself!), but it strikes me as a real practical concern. Also, how on earth do you transplant, divide, add new plants? I can't imagine doing this in my garden without little rubber nuggets getting in the holes and backfilled soil.

I guess I'm more a leather jacket sort of guy rather than one who prefers the "advantages" of vinyl.

I have a question for those who use it: how do you add organic material to your soil? It seems that, esthetics aside, you either like the look or you do not, and leaching aside, it either does or it doesn't, what I find myself thinking about from a practical perspective is how would you replenish the soil with organic matter? Or have you thought about that? Your soil, "protected" as it is by a thick rubber mulch, will eventually "run out" of organic matter. What is your plan? Not to mention you won't have any worms, if not already then eventually, so you lose all of their well-documented benefits.
I don't say this to be provocative (though I would never use it myself!), but it strikes me as a real practical concern. Also, how on earth do you transplant, divide, add new plants? I can't imagine doing this in my garden without little rubber nuggets getting in the holes and backfilled soil.