ECO-RUBBER Uses Recycled Rubber to Produce Bollard

The ECO-RUBBER consortium formulated by companies such as BERLÁ and RECIPNEU and technology institutes such as AIMPLAS and IBV with an objective of optimizing the rubber recycling process and its usage has brought down the project’s first results related to the industrialization process.

The project is started with an objective to optimize the rubber recycling process to produce quality furniture manufactured utilizing the latest sintered procedure. The developed recycled rubber products will be eco-friendly and energy sustainable substitutes to the other products manufactured utilizing concrete, wood or pure rubber. The new recycled process will enable adaptation of the recycled rubber attributes to the material properties of the products while providing the benefits of urban furniture.

The project has chosen bollard to showcase the benefits of urban improvement utilizing recycled rubber because of it inherent elasticity to cut down the injury risks during accidents or hits. More over, the project will enable the use of recycled rubber as an eco-friendly substance for the manufacture of necessary innovative products instead of its entering the landfills or incinerators.

The dumped tires often pose ecological problems. According a report from the European Association of Tyres and Rubber Manufacturers (ETRMA) in 2007 alone, 27 countries of the EU have collected over 3.4 Mt of tyres, and out of which only 38% was recycled to manufacture low quality products while another 32% was incinerated causing ecological problems.

The ECO-RUBBER project is designed for a period of 30 months and utilizes €1.000.000 financed by the European Commission through the EACI (Executive Agency for Competitiveness and Innovation) program. It is an ancillary of CRIOSINTER FP6 CRAFT project, which demonstrated the feasibility of utilizing 95% of recycled rubber thus bringing down the ecological impact by over 70% in comparison with natural rubber. It used crumb recycled rubber got from assorted grinding sources to achieve the objective.