‘Real success story’: Metro Van parks to become part of B.C.’s circular tire economy

The executive director of Tire Stewardship BC says picking communities to receive grants to use recycled rubber in community spaces was an emotional process.

Rosemary Sutton tells CityNews that the applications the tire recycling agency receives for these spaces can be emotionally charged with pleas from community members for revitalized spaces.

The program provides community organizations with grants to complete projects that use tires recycled in B.C. and has been running since 2010. This year, ten communities across the province will be receiving a total of 27,921 recycled B.C. tires for various rubberized surfaces.

In Vancouver, the Downtown Eastside’s Oppenheimer Park is one of those recipients. Sutton says the park seemed like a natural fit for the grant program’s objective of giving back to communities in need.

While the revitalization of the space is already in the works, Sutton says the hope is that this new playground — made with recycled B.C. tires — will help draw people back to this once lively community hub.

“One of the things they had told us in their application was the revitalization has been happening, but they’re not seeing the families coming back,” she said. “And so with this playground, hopefully, that’s exactly what will happen.”

Related Articles:

• Early-season snow expected on B.C. mountain highways

• Surrey’s removal of derelict boats from Nicomekl result of a years-long push: local

Other poignant applications stuck in Sutton’s mind from past years include a letter of support from a grandmother for a playground in Victoria. She says the woman described in her letter how she wanted the playground surface to be made of tires because it’s an accessible surface, and other playground surfaces mean she can’t play with her grandkids at the park.

North Vancouver will also receive a Tire Stewardship BC grant this year, for the Delbrook Lands Neighbourhood Park Playground.

In total, the equivalent of 5.5 million car tires are collected by Tire Stewardship BC every year as part of the province’s impressive circular tire economy, says Sutton.

She says any business that sells a tire in B.C. is required to register with the recycling agency due to provincial legislation. Then, the agency regularly travels to businesses across the province to pick up scrap tires. They also regularly visit landfills to collect tires that have been dropped off.

Related Video:

Every tire collected by the agency eventually ends up in Delta, where the province’s main tire recycling facility, Western Rubber, is located.

The majority of the crumb rubber produced by Western Rubber goes to Northwest Rubber, an Abbotsford-based recycled rubber mat manufacturer. There, scrap tires evolve into other products, such as horse mats, gym flooring, and mats for the beds of pickup trucks.

The entire process creates a circular tire economy within B.C., something Sutton says is unique compared to other provinces.

“We’ve got waste that was created in British Columbia, it gets recycled in British Columbia, and now we have the majority of it actually being turned into an end product in British Columbia,” Sutton said.

“I think that’s a real success story. And it certainly sets us apart from other programs either in Canada or North America.”

Sutton says while the grants program is focused on giving back to communities, it’s also a very tangible way for people to see how tires can be recycled in our everyday lives.

It’s important to remember that once a tire is created, Sutton says, it can’t be destroyed.

She says Tire Stewardship’s recycling program was created because of a tire fire in Ontario that burned for 17 days in 1990.

“They can’t just sit in the environment, and whenever you’ve got a solution for them… it doesn’t make sense for you to think about just leaving these tires in the environment,” she said.

The Oppenheimer Park project is expected to be complete in September 2024 and the Delbrook project is expected to be complete in March or April of 2025. Both playgrounds will use approximately 2,500 recycled tires each.