Civil engineering applications

A variation of landfill is the so-called civil engineering applications which have been widely used in the US and some European countries, e.g. Finland and UK.

In civil engineering applications, the tyres are shredded roughly, without any separation of the basic materials rubber, steel and textile, and used as filling material for various purposes. A widespread use is as substitution material for gravel, sand and stone in landfill drainage layers and landfill top layers. Other civil engineering applications might be sub-layer for roads, noise barriers or even artificial reefs.

Common for all these applications are the consequential environmental problems as e.g. steel is left in the environment to oxidize. Authorities throughout the world are increasingly skeptical about this disposal method, which is already banned in some countries.  

As none of the basic materials are recovered, and consequently no avoided production takes place, the use of tyres in civil engineering applications is much less beneficial from a climate point of view compared to material recycling. The comparative benefit is documented to be 1.8 tons CO2 equivalents per ton of scrap tyre input. An executive summary of this study can be downloaded from the download centre.