What is the state of the art in Europe on the uses of rubber recycled from end-of-life tyres? What news awaits us in the near future; what are the market trends and the opportunities to diversify the outputs of supply chains? These are the questions at the centre of the strategies to promote application markets of rubber recycled from ELTs that management companies throughout Europe are facing.  Rubber Summit 2015 – an event that brings together key European players on the subject, organized on November 19 in Brussels by Recytyre, the main company responsible for the management of ELTs in Belgium – is being held to share different experiences and examples of excellence as well as to discuss which successful models can be implemented on a European scale.

Daniele Fornai, Ecopneus’ R&D Manager, will speak in the afternoon session to share Ecopneus’ experience and what has been done to promote applications of recycled rubber in Italy. What has been done in just four years, since an ELT management system based on Producer Responsibility started in Italy as well in September 2011, is undoubtedly a case of excellence that has quickly led Italy to the same level as other European countries.

The consolidation of the recycled rubber markets is in fact a field on which Ecopneus is focusing with great conviction, with an investment in research and innovation that from 2013 to date has already reached 14 million euros to promote applications of rubber recycled from ELTs.  This panorama of growth currently sees the use of recycled rubber in sports flooring (30%), play areas for children (13%), acoustic insulation for building (5%) and low-noise asphalts (1%).

In 2014 alone, thanks to Ecopneus’ recycling activities, Italy saved 105 million euros on the import of raw materials through replacement with materials from recycling.

The benefits are both economic and environmental in nature, considering that, still referring to 2014 alone, at the national level the emission of 344,000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere has been avoided, as well as the waste of 1.8 million m3 of water and 377,000 tons of mineral and fossil resources necessary to produce goods being replaced by recycling.

Here the papers prepared for the partecipants:

Ecopneus Sustainability Report 2014

– Abstract of Ecopneus Sustainability Report 2014

International Inventory of products from End-of-Life Tyres

– Technical paper “Durability of the acoustical performance”

– Technical paper “Occupational health risk assessment for the workers exposed to rubberized asphalt fumes”

– Recycled Rubber Applications

The acoustic correction project in Festambiente

Acoustic insulation with recycled rubber

Modified asphalts with rubber powder