Tyres

[Derwent]

According to the green lobby, one of the adverse effects of car use is the millions of tons of tyre dust we leave behind. Now we may well get 10k miles from a set of tyres on our road cars but but sometimes the "soft" tyres on F1 cars do less than 50 miles. There was a time when F1 one cars did not need to change tyres and in some cases did more than one race on a set.
Two questions come to mind:
a) Is using tyres with high war rates (in order to create a spectacle) in keeping with the need to make the sport green?
b) What happens to the thousands of used carcases made by Pirelli?

[crmalcolm]

Originally Posted by Derwent

b) What happens to the thousands of used carcases made by Pirelli?

Pirelli’s Formula One tyre recycling commitment


'All of the tyres are transported back to Pirelli’s engineering and logistics hub at Didcot after each race weekend, where they are finely shredded, along with other road car tyres.

The shredded tyres form small pellets, which are then burnt at extremely high temperatures as fuel for cement factories. These extremely high temperatures, in excess of 1500 degrees centigrade, mean that no noxious fumes are released and the only particles that remain are very fine, non-poisonous, ash.

Pirelli has been using this technology since 2002 in Italy, and also used it throughout since its return to single-seater competitions in 2010. In total, Pirelli will dispose of up to 80,000 competition tyres this year using this method – which has been adopted as well in other countries throughout the world.

Pirelli’s motorsport director Paul Hembery commented: “The environment has always been extremely high on our agenda at Pirelli. The way that we dispose of the tyres is firm evidence of this: in fact, the road surfaces that spectators drive on to get to grands prix in future could well be made up of some of our recycled tyres…”'

[fourWheelDrift]

Originally Posted by crmalcolm

Pirelli’s Formula One tyre recycling commitment


'All of the tyres are transported back to Pirelli’s engineering and logistics hub at Didcot after each race weekend, where they are finely shredded, along with other road car tyres.

The shredded tyres form small pellets, which are then burnt at extremely high temperatures as fuel for cement factories. These extremely high temperatures, in excess of 1500 degrees centigrade, mean that no noxious fumes are released and the only particles that remain are very fine, non-poisonous, ash.

Pirelli has been using this technology since 2002 in Italy, and also used it throughout since its return to single-seater competitions in 2010. In total, Pirelli will dispose of up to 80,000 competition tyres this year using this method – which has been adopted as well in other countries throughout the world.

Pirelli’s motorsport director Paul Hembery commented: “The environment has always been extremely high on our agenda at Pirelli. The way that we dispose of the tyres is firm evidence of this: in fact, the road surfaces that spectators drive on to get to grands prix in future could well be made up of some of our recycled tyres…”'

As someone who has spent twenty years involved in the cement industry and lives less than a mile from a cement works that burns tyres I'll chip in my thoughts. This is not only a very effective and safe way of disposing of tyres from racing and the road but also often replaces coal as a fuel so that emissions of CO2 are actually reduced in comparison. This is different to incinerating tyres as a method of disposal as incinerators usually burn at lower temperatures Cement needs 1440 degrees centigrade plus for it's manufacture, to put it crudely in a cement kiln you have to melt and mix rock, at these temperatures no evidence of the tyre remains.


There is no way you can tell if the works is burning tyres, nothing but steam comes from the chimney.


As a bonus iron is one of the constituents of cement and shredded road tyres contain a fair amount of steel!

[steve_r]

Unless things have changed, all the unused tyres from a race weekend are also disposed of the same way. It all seems a massive waste and cannot really be "green", whether or not the high temperature incineration method is effective or not.

Of course, all on track activity and green efforts are insignificant when compared with the hundreds of thousands of road & air miles transporting the circus around the globe and the travel arrangements of the hundreds of thousands of spectators who turn up to watch the races.

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by steve_r

Of course, all on track activity and green efforts are insignificant when compared with the hundreds of thousands of road & air miles transporting the circus around the globe and the travel arrangements of the hundreds of thousands of spectators who turn up to watch the races.

Yes. Many people (particularly those who are not in favor of any green initiatives) are rankled by this ironic fact and try to use that to argue the pointlessness of it all. But they are missing the bigger picture that in the end, for the most part, "green" and "road relevancy" efforts are about the marketing side of things and less about the "real impact within F1". Look here, but don't look at what is off screen. This is not an "ends justifies the means" argument, but just the cost of doing business. It is a "perception is reality" type of thing. If F1 "looks" to be green, then it "is" green from the perspective of an average citizen of the world. And F1 is not the only thing in the world that has some type of hypocrisy going on.

Sorry if this comes across as overly negative or cynical as that is not how I view it. I actually just think this is an honest view of how things work. The world is not black and white. It is shades of grey. It's messy. Even if we want it to be pure.

Richard

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by Derwent

a) Is using tyres with high war rates (in order to create a spectacle) in keeping with the need to make the sport green?

In the grand scheme of things, F1 cars contribute net zero to absolutely anything environmental. Transportation is the biggest problem regarding any sports environmental impact.

[Derwent]

That is a good summary of the situation. I watched the first programme of a series about Dubai the other day. The environmental impact of the actual creation of maintenance of that city must be huge, quite apart from hedonistic extravagance of the people who live there while we are making efforts to be more green.