Recycled tires and landscaping have more in common than you might think. In fact, quite a few landscaping products are currently being made from recycled tires. And they’re available now in stores across Ontario, including Lowe’s, Canadian Tire and The Home Depot. You could say recycled tires are where environmentally-friendly meets environmental design.

Ready For Your Ideas
Whether you’re gardening in your backyard, submitting a landscaping design plan to a large commercial client or somewhere in between, recycled products can effectively and affordably help bring your ideas to life. Today, tires are recycled into mulch. They’re turned into edging, interlocking bricks, asphalt, paving and patio stones. Recycled tire material is found in landscape architecture supplies from bricks and blocks to rocks and borders and beyond.

Good For The Planet
If you’ve read this far, chances are you love the outdoors, you make your living from it or both. So why wouldn’t you support a practice that helps protect it? Every year, around a billion tires reach the end of their usefulness. That’s a lot of potential pollution. Recycling these tires reduces the need for raw materials and huge amounts of energy used when making products from raw material. Recycling reduces emissions of greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons. Translation: Recycling is a very good thing…which makes buying products made from recycled material a good thing too.

Here are a few of the great landscaping products that are made from recycled tires, and the advantages of incorporating them in your next project.

Rubber Mulch

• Drains rapidly and efficiently, while retarding weed growth
• Resists mould, mildew and fungi, and is toxin-free
• No seasonal replacement (lasts 10 times longer than wood mulch)
• Costs 65% less than wood mulch over a five-year performance period

Rubber Tiles

• Withstands freeze/thaw cycles
• Slip resistance ideal for wet areas
• Design has channels to allow for water drainage
• Noise- and impact-absorbing
• Comes in a variety of colours and patterns

Rubber Bricks

• Faster to install than conventional brick pavers
• Safe, non-slip surface
• All-season and weather durability

Using landscaping products made from recycled tires can reduce waste on the job so you end up sending less to the landfill. It can enhance the health and appearance of your landscaping project. And hey, you might even save some green. (Sorry, we couldn’t help it.)

For more information on landscaping products made from recycled tires, please continue to explore rethinktires.ca.