How can End-of-Life tyres fight climate change, limit the use of fossil resources and of energy, and contribute to make our cities more sustainable and “smarter”?
From Saturday 30th March until Monday, 1st April, at the station of Turin Porta Nuova, adults and children will find an answer to this question visiting the car set up by Ecopneus on the TrenoVerde (GreenTrain). This is the historical itinerating campaign of Legambiente and Ferrovie dello Stato (the Italian National Railways). Ecopneus is a main partner of the event. This year the campaign is dedicated to a great global challenge: leave the era of fossil resources and stop climate change.
The third car of the train is fully dedicated to the chain of End-of-Life Tyre (ELT) recovery and recycling of Ecopneus. The rubber a tyre is made of is, indeed, a material of great quality used to make “silent”, safe and long-lasting asphalts, football pitches, multi-purpose sports surfaces, soundproofing panels, urban furniture objects and much more. Inside the car, the visitors will find a comfortable floor made with over 1,000 kg of recycled rubber, which has been shaped and coloured to reproduce some of its main applications, such as: tennis courts, cycle lanes, or athletics tracks. Illustrations, games, and installations will lead children and adults along an educative path to personally understand the importance of a correct recycling of ELTs and the multiple applications of recycled rubber.
A concrete experience of recycled rubber circular economy can be found also in Barge (CN) and Vercelli, where recycled rubber sports surfaces have been donated to Barge’s Comprehensive School and Vercelli’s IC Lanino Institute by Ecopneus, as a prize for the projectEducational in Piedmont and Valle d’Aosta. Indeed, the students have faced a training course in their classrooms with the educators of Legambiente, visits to the recycling plants, and they have then been asked to make an advertisement video on the correct recycling of End-of-Life Tyres: Ecopneus has donated a sports surface to the three classes that made the best videos.
Giovanni Corbetta, General Manager of Ecopneus stated: “Taking part to the TrenoVerde journey – for Ecopneus, it is its third year in a row – is an excellent occasion to show the value and the importance of ELT recycling to the many students and citizens involved, by the means of many fields of applications of this amazing material: from anti-shock mats for playgrounds for the youngest children, to roads; from football and volleyball courts of the school gyms, to bollards; from benches and flower boxes, to insulation materials for the building sector. We dedicate great attention to education, because the culture of environmental protection must be a central value, especially for the younger generations, who are tomorrow’s adult citizens”.
Ecopneus collected and managed 11,482 tonnes of ELTs in 2018. At provincial level, 4,545 tonnes were collected in the Province of Turin; 1,928 tonnes in the Province of Cuneo; 1,560 tonnes in the Province of Alessandria; 827 tonnes in Novara; 718 tonnes in Vercelli; 691 tonnes in the Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola; 670 tonnes in Biella, and 543 in the Province of Asti.
The TrenoVerde left from Rome on 15th February and it has already stopped in Palermo, Bari, and Naples. It has, then, gone back to Rome and carried on towards Pescara, Arezzo, Civitanova Marche, Rimini, Padua, and Genoa. The last stops will be in Turin (30th March – 1st April) and Milan (3-5 April).
Collect ELT