Michelin rolls out pair of road-ready sustainable tires

Michelin's pursuit of 100-percent sustainable tires just took two big steps forward.

The French tire maker Oct. 5 unveiled a pair of road-ready tires—one for passenger vehicles, the other buses—that it says can be produced with 45-percent and 58-percent sustainable materials, respectively.

The tires match the performances of current Michelin tires and represent what could become baseline technologies for the company's tires within two to three years.

For these sustainable tire achievements, Michelin increased the use of natural rubber and bio-based materials such as sunflower oil, rice husk ash silica and bio-based resins. Recycled materials such as carbon black and steel also were used.

Michelin further notes that the sustainability of the materials is built into the fact that their procurement came with as minimal impact to the environment as possible. It's a commitment that Michelin has reiterated in discussing its pursuit of sustainability.

It's also part of Michelin's pledge to consider people, profit and planet in every aspect of operations from manufacturing to budget planning.

The road-ready more sustainable tires do this, Michelin said, while also building on sustainable successes that Michelin has seen on the racetrack. Earlier this year, the tire maker debuted a 53-percent sustainable race tire that was used in the running of 24 Hours of Le Mans. And this achievement came just one year after rolling out a 46-percent sustainable racing tire.

The newest car and bus tires are part of that legacy of sustainable tire development.

"(Racing) is one of the first places that we take something that we believe is ready for the market and test it," Russell Shepherd, technical communications director for Michelin North America Inc., told Rubber News recently. "… It is a great place to quickly get results, analyze them and continue to improve."

Michelin, in its commitment to sustainability, has established short- and long-term aims when it comes the amount of sustainable materials in its tires. By 2030, Michelin said its entire portfolio of tires will include at 40-percent sustainable materials. By 2050, all of the tires Michelin produces will be made with 100-percent sustainable materials.

These aims, the tire maker said, will be achieved because of its expertise and partnerships. These include:

• Taking full ownership of a sustainably sourced natural rubber project;
• Taking a majority stake in Enviro Systems A.B., which focuses on recycled scrap tire derivatives such as recycled carbon black;
• Acquiring Lehigh Technologies, a maker of micronized rubber powders for applications including tires;
• Partnering with Carbios on the development of polyester tire fibers from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic waste; and
• Partnering with Pyrowave to produce commercially yieldable synthetic rubber from styrene.

These efforts, when coupled with the tire maker's internal expertise, is propelling it forward.

"To stick to its road map, Michelin can count on its expertise in the field of high technology materials together with the contribution of the whole of its R&D department with 6,000 engineers, researchers, chemists and developers," Michelin said in a news release. "It is noteworthy that in 2021, Michelin held 3,678 active patents for these materials alone."