Liberty, Bridgestone showcase benefits of rubberized asphalt

AKRON—Liberty Tire Recycling L.L.C. and Bridgestone Americas Inc. showcased the benefits of rubberized asphalt during Recycle Akron: 2013 at Bridgestone's Akron facility on Aug. 22.

The program is part of the companies' joint effort to educate states on the benefits of adopting asphalt using recycled tires.

"What we found is that rubber, when you use it as a modifier specifically replacing the polymer, it can produce a road that requires less maintenance, is more durable, quiet, has better drainage and has a cost savings," said Liberty President Dick Gust. "It wasn't always that way. Technology in rubberized asphalt has changed dramatically over the last 15 years. One of the things that has helped is that the price of oil is now very expensive."

John Sheerin, director of environmental affairs for Bridgestone's retail operations, said the number of miles a state could pave with rubberized asphalt costs less than if it used standardized asphalt, which contains petroleum. With the price of petroleum increasing, rubberized asphalt has passed standardized asphalt from an efficiency standpoint.

Oil prices hover around $110 a barrel, compared to approximately $12 a barrel in 1998. Gust said if styrene is replaced with rubber, he estimates a company could save about $5 per ton of asphalt. The thickness of rubberized asphalt also can be reduced compared to the traditional method, which Gust said provides more savings.

"We're not really going to market with the concept of recycling, though that is a very important component," Gust said. "We're showing the department of transportation that by using rubber, you can actually make a much better road."

Improve marketability

Liberty has grown steadily through acquisition over the last decade. It currently operates 36 facilities in North America, with three in Canada.

The overriding goal of the company is to improve the marketability of scrap tire raw material. Through its partners—which range from major retail sources, such as Bridgestone, to independent dealers across the country—Liberty collects scrap tires and processes them into higher end products.

Gust said Liberty is the largest tire recycler in North America, and the company will manage the flow of approximately 150 million of the 280 million scrap tires the nation generates annually.

"One of the things we recognize is that rubber modified asphalt could be the solution for tire recycling," Gust said. "It could consume all the material that we could process into the road if we could gain acceptance across all of the states."

Bridgestone an ideal partner

Bridgestone also sees rubberized asphalt as a viable means to recycle tires, which is why the company partnered with Liberty to spread awareness of the product. The companies jointly have hosted a number of rubberized asphalt programs such as Recycle Akron in Georgia, Wisconsin and Tennessee.

The tire manufacturer said it recycled 10.1 million tires from retail in 2012. Sheerin said about half of those went to Liberty.

"Right now they are one of our primary scrap tire recyclers nationally," Sheerin said. "We have a pretty close partnership with them. We're working with them on a couple of projects, including trying to grow the market on rubberized asphalt."

Bridgestone's goal is for every tire it sells, one spent tire will be sent to a valuable purpose. Sheerin also stressed that the program is size-indexed, meaning a passenger tire sold equates to recycling a passenger tire, a truck tire sold equates to recycling a truck tire.

"They are a manufacturer that's directed their goals to becoming totally sustainable," Gust said. "Many people talk about that, but Bridgestone's directive is they want to recycle one tire for every tire that they manufacturer. They've come to us, and we've worked cooperatively to figure out ways that we could in fact use that material in a higher environmental fashion."

Sheerin said the industry as a whole has been trying to grow the market through the Rubber Manufacturers Association. Bridgestone would like to increase the use of rubber modified asphalt especially in states where it has a strong presence—Tennessee, Florida, South Carolina and Illinois.

Georgia paving the way

Georgia State Rep. Randy Nix met Gust at an event similar to Recycle Akron that Liberty hosted in Georgia. Nix already was working on legislation involving the recycling industry, which led him to get more involved with the business.

Nix, who is sold on the viability of rubberized asphalt, asked the transportation committees in the Georgia House of Representatives and Senate to hold a joint committee hearing for a presentation on the benefits on rubberized asphalt.

"I knew if I could get them to see what I saw, they would begin to put pressure on the bureaucracy to go ahead and move on this technology and start to use it," Nix said. "And it worked."

The session prompted the state to modify its road asphalt specification to allow rubberized asphalt. As a result, Gust said his company will put an additional 2 million pounds of recycled tire rubber in Georgia asphalt in 2013.

"We had the threat of using legislation, but it never was necessary," Nix said. "Once the members of those committees saw and started asking why Georgia wasn't using it, it's a proven technology. It began to move the bureaucracy to the point where they went ahead and approved it, and it's now being used in a number of projects in the state."

Nix said that most of the battle is getting engineers to embrace a new process. Most are comfortable with the process they know because they are certain their process works. Even though rubberized asphalt had been approved in other states similar to Georgia, like Arizona, engineers were hesitant in trusting something new.

"What's necessary is to get the Department of Transportation and the engineering people to understand that this is a really good product, and this is something they should be looking at," Gust said. "That's the challenge we always face.

"We're all guilty as humans that when we feel comfortable with doing something for a long period of time it's difficult to change."