Industry

Every two weeks, Americans wear almost 50 million pounds of rubber off their tires. That's enough to make 3.25 million new tires from scratch.

The Environmental Protection Agency reports 290 million scrap tires were generated in 2003. Of the 290 million, 45 million of these scrap tires were used to make automotive and truck tire re-treads. The United States has decreased the number of waste tires in storage from 700-800 million in 1994, down to 275 million tires in 2004 primarily due to state scrap management programs.

In the United States of America, scrap metal processors recycle the following estimated quantities on an annual basis:

• 56 million tons of scrap iron and steel
• 1.5 million tons of scrap copper
• 2.5 million tons of scrap aluminum
• 10 million tons of scrap automobiles
• 1.3 million tons of scrap lead
• 300,000 tons of scrap zinc
• 800,000 tons of stainless steel scrap