National Association of Pneumatic Industry (ANIP) is a non-profit organization that represents pneumatic industries in Brazil. Besides defending industries commercial interests, ANIP also acts in favor of tire recycling not only by industries operating in Brazil but also importers. As a way to ensure and increase recycling rates the association founded “Reciclanip”, a project that aims to collect and destinate scrap tires to recycling and reuse. Since 1999, approximately 210 million dollars have been invested in this initiative, leading to the creation of more than 800 scrap tires collecting points all over the country and the gathering of 3.11 million tons of rubber waste. Only in the first quarter of 2015, more than 110 tons of scrap tires were correctly destined to be reused due to Reciclanip. This number represents 23 million units of car tires out of the streets, rivers and roads of Brazil. ANIP intends to continue investing actively in this project, with a prediction for spending 30 million dollars in 2015.
    Our team was invited to visit ANIP's office in São Paulo after media coverage of our project. In this meeting, we had the chance to present our idea directly to experts on tire recycling, which led to very enriching conversations. We discussed the need of new technologies to valorize and meet scrap tires demand in a sustainable way since it is not only an environmental problem but also an economic issue - different from european countries, where the customer pays recycling taxes, brazilian pneumatic industry pays for scrap tires transport and subsequent processing, a cost of US$ 40 millions per year. Also, as accumulated tires are the ideal environment for Dengue fever’s mosquito proliferation, ANIP takes all the necessary safety precautions to avoid diseases development, leading to even higher collection points maintenance costs. ANIP members reassured us that our project would perfectly fit this need of reducing health risks and costs, once it would prevent the tires from accumulating and generate a high valued product by degradation of a pollutant residue.
    In our second meeting with ANIP members, we visited a recycling company (CBL) and a collection point that receives waste tires from all over the country. In the collecting point, they explained us that the tire rotation is 200 tons/month and only 1% of this material is reused as tire after retreatment, while the remaining quantity is addressed to recycle. On other words, 2 tons/month goes to the the market and these products do not compete in the market, due to lack of good quality in physical properties.
    After visiting ANIP we had a real notion of the problem and identified an absence of technologies to make up the amount of discarded tires. Additionally, we recognized an opportunity of partnership with ANIP, where they would supply tires to validate our technology and in the future we could contribute with them, giving an use to these tires that do not go back to the market in a company founded by the team members.

Figure 1: Figure 1. Bruno and Danilo in ANIP office

Figure 2:Camila in a tire collecting point.

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