A Clean-Tech Manufacturing Facility for Sustainable Building Products
Date: January 2022 - May 2022
Student Researchers: Olivia Collier, Maslin Mellick
Faculty Advisor: Julee Herdt, Senior Professor of Architecture, BioSIPs, Inc’s CEO & founder.
Around 290 million tires are discarded in the U.S. each year. Many of which end up in landfills and take thousands of years to decompose. Since the invention of the modern tire, there have been no alternative materials used in tire production. Therefore, as long as tires continue to be made they will end up in landfills.
Colorado is home to the nation’s largest tire monofill, holding currently 60-80 million tires just 40 miles north of Denver. Of these tires only a small percentage are recycled for tire derived fuel, crumb rubber, landfill mediums, field mulch, and other uses that are toxic to the environment, and cause underlying health risks. The recycling process for these uses is toxic because when the rubber is shredded, sulfur off-gasses into the air that we breathe.
This project provides a new way of recycling tires through the design of a manufacturing process that minimized off gassing, and creates a new innovative building material from society's waste.
The Green-Tech Manufacturing Facility will host the tire recycling and manufacturing process of our building material, while also creating a transparent and educational experience for the public to learn about waste tire devastation, and how tires can be recycled and repurposed through architectural innovation.