This year’s Greener by Design conference in San Francisco marked the beginning of a new journey for heaps of tired retired tires. Re-Tread proudly presented a revolutionary upcycling solution called Tire Logs, which are used as exceptionally structural building material. The logs are super versatile, and aside from making up buildings of all sorts, they have a number of specific uses like retaining walls, highway noise barriers, erosion control structures, and security barricades. It almost seems karmic that befriending the environment by upcycling tires spares your abode when nature unleashes its wrath in the form of an earthquake. The logs are composed of strips of tire (with sidewalls removed) that are helically woven around a central bundle of strips. They can be manufactured virtually to any width and length and provide superior stability and shock absorption. Cutting the tires into separated strips and sidewalls saves time, labor, transportation, and ultimately, the mega footprint of costly and dirty tire recycling processes. Unlike bottles, cans, and cardboard boxes, tires are indestructible orphans, turned away from junkyards and landfills. They must be transferred to specialized tire recycling plants that eat up ridiculous amounts of energy in the act of grinding these stubborn steel-laced rings.

Tire-clad dwellings have been around in Taos, New Mexico for quite some time. You may have heard of Earthships, a community of off-grid homes made of natural and recycled materials of which tires play an integral role. Much of these homes’ structures make use of free unwanted tires (that might have otherwise been illegally burnt) by stacking them and tightly packing the cavities with soil, a long laborious process that is difficult to mechanize. In light of this, I’d most likely build with the logs should I choose to go the rubber route any time soon. Tire logs are modern building blocks that suit just about any need and give us an accessible and modular way to build responsibly.

With hundreds of millions of tires discarded each year in the US alone, Re-Tread will have an abundant supply of strips, leaving only sidewalls, which will immensely relieve the tire recycling process and its toll on our environment as the word spreads and demand increases. Oh, and Re-Tread’s already a step ahead as they’ve begun testing a new building material that utilizes sidewalls, and has so far proven successful.