Recycling decreases the quantity of waste to be collected and disposed of, provides job opportunities to the poor people, conserves finite resources and saves environment. The items commonly recycled are paper, glass, plastics, rubber etc. Recycling of rubber receives less priority and attention than other waste materials like paper and metals due to its financial value, margin of profit, final product, marketability, quality and public acceptance. This paper examines local technologies and legislative measures practised in industrialized and less industrialized countries and suggests actions for an optimal re-use of waste rubber. Waste rubber production Population growth, rapid industrialization and increase in living standards have caused extensive usage of rubber producing proportional quantities of wastes.
Vehicular tires constitute the most important single item in terms of volume.
In the industrialized countries rubber tires alone account for 60 per cent of the total rubber consumption. With the increase in automobile and bicycle production huge quantities of waste rubber tires are turning into waste mountains. In a modern car it is possible to find besides the tires more than 500 different rubber parts, whose total weight varies from 30 - 45 kilogrammes. In USA about 242 million tires are discarded annually. In Canada the figure is 10 million, while Germany wears out 0.6 million tires, France 0.4 million, U.K. 0.74 million and Italy 0.37 million a year.