Carmakers trialling Bridgestone’s 75% recycled & renewable tyre

Bridgestone Americas has produced a run of demonstration tyres with 75 per cent recycled and renewable materials (38% renewable, 37% recycled content), including synthetic rubber made with recycled plastics and natural rubber containing hevea and guayule harvested from desert shrubs grown in the Arizona desert. The company has produced 200 of these demonstration tyres and is pursuing joint evaluation with vehicle manufacturers for use on the next generation of electrified SUVs and crossovers.

Designed and engineered at Bridgestone’s Americas Technology Center in Akron, Ohio, the new tyres were produced at the company’s Aiken County plant in Graniteville, South Carolina. The Aiken plant is a fitting place for such a sustainability project, being the first tyre manufacturing facility in America to earn International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) PLUS certification for transparency and traceability of sustainable raw materials including bio, bio-circular and circular-based material. Aiken also operates an on-site, 8-acre solar array that provides renewable energy to aid in powering the plant’s manufacturing operations.

From drawing board to driveway

“As we progress in our transformation to a sustainable solutions company, we are making incredible progress in the use of recycled and renewable materials to bring sustainable tyre technology from the drawing board to the driveway,” says Paolo Ferrari, president and chief executive officer, Bridgestone Americas. “The production and deployment of a 75 per cent recycled and renewable materials tyre technology marks a significant milestone as we accelerate our progress toward using fully sustainable materials in our products by 2050.”

According to Bridgestone, the company underscored its “relentless commitment to its goal of using 100 per cent sustainable materials in its products by 2050” in remarks made by global chief executive officer Shuichi Ishibashi during a briefing with media and industry analysts on 16 February, during which Bridgestone also announced it is pursuing a tyre design utilising 90 per cent recycled and renewable materials for passenger cars.

75% recycled & renewable materials

The 200 demonstration tyres contain a multitude of materials derived from recycled and biobased feedstocks. These include recycled monomer, produced with recycled materials including plastic bottles, to create the synthetic rubber in the tyre as well as recycled steel, recycled carbon black, tyre pyrolysis oil-derived carbon black, and bio-based carbon black. Multiple materials are ISCC Plus certified.

The new tyre is the first roadgoing tyre to utilise natural rubber derived from the guayule desert shrub cultivated at Bridgestone’s guayule R&D agricultural facility in Eloy, Arizona. Bridgestone has spent more than ten years and over US$100 million on the research and development of guayule as an alternative to imported natural rubber from the Hevea Brasiliensis tree, which grows mainly in Southeast Asia. Guayule can serve as an alternative to existing crops, such as alfalfa and cotton, in America’s drought-stricken desert southwest, requiring as little as half the water to cultivate.

Guayule is part of Bridgestone’s plan to achieve carbon neutrality and make tyres from 100 per cent sustainable materials by 2050. The company is targeting commercial production of guayule-derived natural rubber by the end of the decade.