How much of a tyre is actually recoverable as reusable material, and how much is genuine waste?
Short answer: A modern tyre is genuinely recoverable to a very high degree — typically the large majority of its total weight, made up of rubber compound, steel wire, and fabric or textile cord, can be processed into crumb rubber, recovered steel scrap, pyrolysis oil and char, or tyre-derived fuel, meaning true, unrecoverable waste from a properly processed tyre is genuinely a small fraction of the original material rather than the majority.
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List Free →Why most of a tyre’s weight is genuinely recoverable
Rubber compound makes up the bulk of a tyre’s weight and is recoverable as crumb rubber, fuel, or pyrolysis products, while the steel wire — though a smaller fraction by weight — is fully recoverable as clean scrap metal, meaning very little of the original material is genuinely unusable waste.
Why the specific recovery rate depends on the processing pathway chosen
Mechanical processing, pyrolysis, and TDF each recover the tyre’s material differently, so the exact proportion converted into a sellable product genuinely varies by which pathway a given tyre is processed through.
Why this matters for how the industry is generally viewed
Because so little of a properly processed tyre is genuine waste, tyre recycling is generally regarded as a highly effective material recovery process, rather than one where most material ends up discarded.
How ScrapTrade Fits In
The steel fraction recovered from every properly processed tyre is genuine, sellable scrap metal — exactly the material that gets listed and traded through ScrapTrade.
Tyre recycling recovers far more material than most people realise — rubber, steel, and fabric each follow a distinct path from collection to end product. ScrapTrade connects verified buyers and sellers of the scrap metal recovered along the way, with transparent weighing and escrow-protected payments.
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