During mid-90’s, when I completed my Chartered Accountancy, my first job was with CEAT Limited. CEAT is a tyre manufacturing company founded in Italy which later set-up its manufacturing plant in Mumbai. CEAT is an abbreviation for Cavi Elettrici Affini Torino (Electric Cables and Allied Products of Turin). Around 1980's, the company became an Indian company.

I joined the internal audit department and it involved travelling to factories, regional offices and C&F agencies. During these audit visits, one of the important tasks was to go to the godowns and do physical verification of tyres and during this process I got to know a lot about tyres as well as various varieties of tyres. I worked in CEAT for about 5 years before moving on.

One of the major issue that most of the tyre companies faced at that time was disposing the discarded tyres which would come back to the company either due to defects or the ones that remain unsold till the end of their shelf life. I presume that this still remains an issue with the tyre companies. Recycling the old tyre was indeed a good option but it came with huge costs which most of the times would make recycling unviable as these tyres had to be transported back to the factories from various corners of the country. Transportation cost used to be very high for the big tyres i.e. the ones for truck and tractors.

Recently, I got connected with my ex-colleagues on a Facebook group and one of the colleague, Mr.Shiv Shankar Biswas shared some pictures about a Tyre Park somewhere in Gujarat. The pictures were really very interesting and showed the imagination of the person who used the old tyres aesthetically in decorating the park & homes as well as making joy rides for kids. Those pictures triggered a thought process and prompted me for this blog post. A visit to the tyre park is in my bucket list and would plan a trip there in the near future.

Thanks to my colleague, I looked around on internet for various uses of discarded tyres and I landed up in a whole new world which I had never explored or even imagined about.

I am a travel bug and like travelling a lot to known and unknown destinations. I enjoy travelling as I get to see the amazing places which are naturally beautiful. However, I do feel and have a feeling that considering the quantum of waste we are generating, if we did not start recycling at the same pace, very soon the amazing & naturally beautiful places will stop being so beautiful.

Therefore, I have a few recommendations. My recommendation for...

1. Recommendation for Town Planners

I think its high time the town planners and the urban art experts devised some strategy to recycle this waste to effectively channelize it. With ever increasing vehicles on the roads, the waste generated from discarded tyres will also keep going up. May be they can think of some strategy on consultation with tyre companies, municipal authorities, etc.

2. Recommendation for Tyre Companies

Tyre companies can take a lead in this initiative by setting up "The Tyre Gardens" in collaboration with local municipalities and residential complexes. These will not only help creating social assets but will also help in recycling, save cost of transportation to a certain extent and get publicity for the companies. In fact, the cost in setting up gardens will be offset to certain extent by the savings generated from avoided transportation. They can also create some publicity material and distribute to customers around these at the time of sale of the vehicles.

3. Recommendation for Individuals / RWA's

We can try experimenting with few of these ideas at our homes, residential society and nearby areas. Tyre companies can play some role by creating some brochures capturing these ideas and sharing with customers while selling tyres.

Giving below some interesting examples of how discarded tyres can be used and recycled around our surroundings with not much of cost involved. I must say that the pictures are self explanatory and I do not think I will have to add further words to describe.

For more ideas, around recycling tyres for home tyre garden, please visit:
Tyre Garden@Pinterest

All images are by Google and Pinterest