Track: Waste Management

Abstract

Around a billion new tires are generated every year around the world as a result of the global growth of the tire industry, but only a small percentage are reused as in closed-loop supply systems. The mining industry is one of the world’s massive scrap off-the-road (OTR) tire generators considering their uninterrupted high-scale activity fueling faster OTR tire life cycles. The handling of massive OTR tires discarded from the mining industry represents an economic, environmental and social challenge. As a solution to this problem, reverse logistics plays an important role enabling the cost-effective management of residual items while affecting the service and product recovery value, adequate final disposition and the development of environmentally friendly practices. This research proposes a solution approach to the problem of the reverse logistics network for residual OTR tires from the mining industry, illustrating with a Colombian case study. An optimization model is proposed to determine the final OTR tires disposition at a minimum cost. Results showed that opening a power generation plant might be a potentially cost-effective solution that could help mines to comply with the country’s regulations and turn this waste into a positive value good.