Natural rubber is rather hard to get, as the trees from which it is cultivated from only grow in certain areas and the method of obtaining it is difficult and time-consuming. Synthetic rubber, on the other hand, is not too tough to create, though it generally comes from petroleum -- not necessarily the greatest compromise. Researchers at The Ohio State University have begun work on a new processing plant which is designed to create natural rubber from the lowly Dandelion plant. The specific plant is the Taraxacum kok-saghyz (TKS), more commonly referred to as the Russian Dandelion. Ten to twenty-percent of that plant's root is ready to make rubber, and researchers believe that plants could be modified for even better yields.

Plenty of rubber can be cultivated from the weeds, with the OSU researchers estimating that they can produce between twenty and sixty-million tons of the stuff annually from their initial processing plant. A certain portion of that rubber will go to tire manufacturer Bridgestone for research. Initial testing has been very positive, meaning that we could someday be rolling on dubs made from yellow weeds.

[Source: Discovery News]

Every time an automaker announces a green signature label, one of the factory-installed features to reduce fuel consumption is probably low-rolling resistance tires. French magazine Autoplus did a test drive on a regular car, to see how much fuel these tires save. The magazine wanted to run the test because France is considering adopting a bonus/malus system on these tires for 2010, whereby tires that save fuel would get a tax exemption.

For the challenge, Autoplus got two Peugeot 308s, one fueled by gasoline and the other fueled by diesel, and they kept on changing their tires. They tested fuel consumption with regular tires and with "CO₂ reducing tires." Their verdict? Keep security in mind. Only low-rolling resistance tires that came from well-known brands (Michelin, Goodyear, Continental and Pirelli) performed correctly and kept braking distances and other security features almost intact. Their winner was Michelin (which are made in France) which stayed safe while offering fuel savings of 1 percent with gasoline and 3.8 with diesel fuel. Of course, it doesn't matter if your tires are lrr type or not - keep them properly inflated.

[Source: Autoplus]

The Chinese auto industry is booming, as you are surely aware by now. While many are concerned with the emissions of those vehicles, as they should be, there are myriads of other related problems to worry about. One problem which is cropping up relates to tire production, which, of course, requires rubber.

Apparently, China's been importing lots of rubber for its growing number of tire factories from other countries which have already cleared land for the production of rubber. In order to reduce the amount of rubber that they need to import, China is looking to produce more rubber locally, but only has a limited area suitable for growing the rubber trees. For that reason, a good deal of rainforest land is being cleared to make way for more rubber plantations. The China Rubber Industry Association forecasts that natural rubber output will grow by 30 percent to 780,000 tons by 2010.

[Source: Just-Auto]

Sustainable and renewable materials - such as cornstarch - are going to be sources for Goodyear's new greener tires. Goodyear announced that it's developing a new line of low rolling resistance tires which will not only save some fuel, but are more "respectful for the environment," since they require less CO₂ to be produced than standard Goodyear tires. Cornstarch is going to be added as "biologic" filling as a substitute for silicon and soot, both of which are usually obtained from oil. Goodyear has teamed up with Novamont, an Italian R+D company, BMW and obtained funds from the European Life Program to develop the tires.

[Source: Motorspain]

Finding some use for old tires is quite a problem. While some have found quite interesting DIY solutions, not all of us are that gifted. So it's a good thing that, besides using them for things such as sidewalks, pavements, basketball courts or even asphalt, they can be used as fuel. Currently, the U.S. burns 52 percent of its old tires, while the EU is burning about 31 percent. But how clean is that? The EPA states that although burning them as fuel is not the cleanest thing on the world, it's better than just stockpiling them or disposing in landfills. Cement factories or power plants can use them to produce energy.

The EPA claims burning tires have the following benefits: they have the same energy content as gasoline, they save the use of fossil fuels, they produce less SOx and NOx than coal or heavy fuels, and in cement kiln applications, the ash resulting becomes an integral component of the product. On the other hand, burning has its drawbacks. It makes very easy to burn other types of trash mixed up with old tires and the combustion produces dioxins. Let's keep working for a win-win solution, something like turning tires into ethanol.

[Source: Consumer Eroski]

The subject of tire recycling is one that has come up here before, but we didn't really offer up any useful suggestions for the average reader on what to do. Let's change all of that with our latest Instructable of the day. Used tires still have lots of life left in them if you are willing to get a little creative. As you can see by the links at the end of this post, quite a few people have come up with this idea already, but it's new to us. The general plan goes like this: trace out a pattern of your foot, trace that pattern on the tire and cut it out. Glue some sort of foot-bed onto the tire cutout and attach straps. Want instructions that are a bit more specific? See here, here or here. We like the idea of promoting walking and recycling tires at the same time.

[Source: Instructables]

All of us probably drive down the expressway and see the fragments of blown tires littering the road. This highlights two points. One, all of tires need to be replaced is obvious, and are those retreaded tires that blew? If retreaded tires are blowing more often than non retreaded tires, should we keep using them? If we do, we will save huge amounts of oil by retreading as opposed to replacing worn tires. There is much written already about the safety of retreaded tires, and the NHTSA has guidelines which must be followed. It seems that if the guidelines are followed, the retreads are safe. If they are safe, we should be using them, for sure.

[Source: Treehugger and NHTSA]

Bridgestone conducted safety checks on over 29,000 cars in nineteen different countries in Europe over the past two years and found some pretty dramatic results. Over ninety percent of the cars checked had under-inflated tires. Of those, almost forty percent had at least one tire that was significantly under-inflated and twelve percent were in danger of tire failure.

Under-inflated tires are a serious safety risk as Bridgestone is well aware now after the Ford Explorer fiasco a few years back. But they also cause a major increase in rolling resistance, which increases fuel consumption. Bridgestone estimates that the forty percent of people with significantly low tires have 2.8 percent increase in fuel consumption, which amounts to 2.1 billion gallons of fuel every year. That also means an extra 18.4 million tons of CO2 are emitted every year or 6.9g/km for every car on the road in Europe. Just getting every tire inflated properly would go quite a way toward meeting CO2 reduction targets without even changing anything mechanically. Under-inflated tires also wear faster, meaning that people have to buy more tires and the old tires need to be disposed of. The Bridgestone press release is after the jump.

[Source: Bridgestone]

It is no secret that the world has a problem with too many used automotive tires. There have been many good uses for them, and even more ideas are currently being thought up. But, unfortunately, there have been some stinkers, too. For instance, using tires as artificial underwater reefs for marine life. As this story on Yahoo attests, these reefs have proven to be nothing short of a disaster. It is not as if we haven't tried, New Jersey especially attempted three different methods of using the old tires in this way. Unfortunately, however, none of them proved successful.

So, what to do with the old tires, if not sink them in the ocean? The best use of used tires for the environment would be to chop them up and recycle them into new products. This is being done, but there are just too many tires and not enough new products that can be made from them; recycled tires are not suitable for use in new tires, unfortunately. Across the world, many of the tires are burned for fuel. This is not a good solution, environmentally speaking. According to this site, "A 21-pound tire contains only five pounds of petroleum-based synthetic rubber. The rest is natural rubber, steel belts and bead wire, carbon black, cloth and a mix of other chemicals which do not contribute significantly to the heating value of an incinerated tire. Burning tires for fuel also reclaims only a small portion of the energy it takes to produce a tire."

The truth of the matter is that there is no real solution to the glut of used tires worldwide. The best we can hope for is that science comes up with more and more ways to recycle them or reduce them to their original compounds. Maybe flying cars are not such a bad idea? Just kidding.

[Source: Yahoo News and Ohio DNR]