Tire Recycling To Benefit From Federal Grant

Funding will support production of EPDs for crumb rubber used in asphalt pavements, roofing and molded construction products

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has selected 38 grant recipients across the country, totaling nearly $160 million, to help reduce climate pollution from the manufacturing of construction materials and products, which EPA estimates accounts for more than 15 percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions.

These transformative awards from the Inflation Reduction Act—the largest climate investment in history—will reduce climate pollution by helping businesses measure the carbon emissions associated with extracting, transporting and manufacturing their products, EPA said in its press release.

Ranging from $250,000 to $10 million, the grants will help businesses develop robust, high-quality environmental product declarations (EPDs), which show environmental impacts across the life of a product.

Among the recipients, Washington, DC -based Scrap Tire Research and Education Foundation (STREF) was selected to receive $3,778,326 in funding for a project whose goal is to develop EPDs for the tire recycling industry based on the development of a Product Category Rule (PCR) for tire recycling.

STREF is a non-profit research foundation established to support basic and applied research and appropriate educational activities on issues relating to the sound handling and utilization of waste or scrap tires.

The grant enables the Scrap Tire Research and Education Foundation to fill gaps for EPDs that use scrap tires, STREF officials said.

Ground tire rubber (GTR) from the tire recycling industry, used as a low-carbon modifier in asphalt mixtures, will play a central role, which begs the question “What is an EPD and Why is it important in the tire recycling industry?”

Environmental Product Declarations or EPDs are like an environmental food label for manufactured products.  They quantify a number of specific environmental impacts tied to the production of a product.  EPD preparation methods are governed by an ISO process that typically requires an independent party to collect all of the required environmental data for the plant and produce the final EPD, which will be company, plant and product specific.

For example, a tire recycling plant may manufacture crumb rubber for use in asphalt.  Their crumb rubber EPD will include things like the CO2 generated during collection and transport of scrap tires to the recycling plant, CO2 generated during processing and packaging of the crumb rubber (CO2 generated by the electricity utility, bulk bag manufacturer and pallet manufacturer), and transport of bagged crumb rubber to the asphalt plant for asphalt mix production.

Where does the tire recycler’s completed crumb rubber EPD go?  The rubber recycler provides their crumb rubber product EPD to the asphalt mix plant, who adds the information to a number of other EPDs – like EPDs for gravel, sand, liquid asphalt, fibers and recycled pavement materials – to come up with a new EPD for the mix they want to produce.
These asphalt mix EPDs allow customers to know which mixed materials are cleaner and greener.

EPDs are building blocks in a supply chain that quantify specific environmental impacts from a specific product, but they are also a part of a larger “sustainability” effort called a Life Cycle Analysis or “LCA.”  An LCA looks beyond the environmental impacts caused by the production of a product and considers the environmental impacts from production and product use through disposal.

If we return to our example about crumb rubber use in asphalt pavements, a pavement LCA would also include the environmental costs of building and maintaining the road, the impact the road has on vehicles, and demolition and removal of the road at the end of the road life.  It turns out that when you add crumb rubber to roads, the rubber extends asphalt pavement life, and rubber helps to keep pavements smoother, longer, which helps to improve car and truck fuel efficiency.  It turns out that when LCA is applied to asphalt roads, rubber additions can significantly reduce pavement environmental impacts, and that is a big deal.

For recycled products like tire rubber in asphalt, EPDs and LCAs are going to really help market creation and development.

The STREF project addresses a critical gap, as there are currently no robust LCAs for the tire recycling process, limiting EPD support for Rubber Modified Asphalt (RMA) mixtures. The project will fill these data gaps and complement the EPD program for asphalt mixtures.

In collaboration with the University of Missouri and Michigan Technological University, the project will gather extensive field performance data on RMA pavements and collect key material input properties for pavement design tools. This effort will quantify the performance and service life of rubber modified asphalts during the pavement use phase.

The robust datasets generated will support the production of EPDs that cover various applications of GTR, including its use in asphalt pavements, roofing and molded construction products. The project is expected to significantly increase the use of GTR in asphalt mixtures, enhance pavement sustainability, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions
associated with asphalt paving activities.

Overall, investments in data and tools will make high-quality EPDs available for fourteen material categories, which include both new and salvaged or reused materials, helping standardize and expand the market for construction products with lower greenhouse gas emissions, EPA said.  “They will make it easier for federal, state and local governments and other institutional buyers to ensure the construction projects they fund use more climate-friendly products and materials,” the agency’s press release said.

EPA will initially offer EPD development support and direct businesses to resources to help them measure and reduce the embodied carbon associated with their materials.  Federal agencies and their suppliers will be able to compare the climate impact of various materials to drive near-term greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Robust EPD data will be further strengthened by a new label program under development that will identify low carbon construction materials for the growing Buy Clean marketplace.

The grants support the Administration’s Federal Buy Clean Initiative, which leverages the U.S. government’s purchasing power to catalyze demand for clean construction materials used in federal buildings, highways, and infrastructure projects.

Deputy EPA Administrator Janet McCabe announced the grant selections at Superior Paving, an asphalt facility in Chantilly, Virginia, alongside Richard Willis, PhD, Vice President for Engineering, Research, & Technology at the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA) and additional federal and industry leaders.

Together, the grants and technical assistance programs provide  more than $2 billion to the General Services Administration to use low embodied carbon materials in the construction and renovation of federal buildings and $2 billion to the Federal Highway Administration to incentivize or reimburse the use of low embodied carbon construction materials in certain transportation projects.