Tires get recycled more than almost anything else Americans throw away. About 79% of worn-out tires get a second life, according to the U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association in its latest report. That beats paper (68%), aluminum cans (45%), and plastic bottles (29%). It sounds like a win. The catch is in the fine print.
Americans toss out more than 250 million tires a year. That 79% is one of recycling’s proudest numbers. But it mixes three very different things together: rubber that becomes new stuff, rubber that gets burned for fuel, and a huge amount of tire material that nobody counts at all because it wears off your tires and washes down the storm drain while you drive.
This installment of our Where Waste Comes From series breaks down what that 79% really means, what it leaves out, and what tires cost you and the country.
What “Recycled” Really Means Here
Here’s the first surprise. The biggest thing we do with old tires is burn them. Shredded tires get torched for energy in cement plants, paper mills, and power plants. That ate up 33% of all scrap tires in 2023, the single largest use. Tires burn hot, and they’re cheap fuel, so the rules count that burning as a “good use.” Incineration does keep tires out of landfills; burning isn’t really recycling. The rubber is gone for good, and the pollution goes up the smokestack.
Real recycling is happening too, it’s just at a smaller scale. Ground-up rubber goes into things like running tracks, playground surfaces, molded products, and a kind of road pavement called rubber-modified asphalt. These reuses are now the second-biggest consumer of used tires at about 28%, having grown 29% since 2019. A little more goes into construction fill. Here’s the rough breakdown:
The Trend the Number Hides
A 79% recycling rate sounds like a system that’s winning. The bigger picture is complicated. USTMA admits that we’re making old tires faster than we can find uses for them. People drive more miles in heavier vehicles, and the markets for used rubber haven’t kept up. The recycling rate has bounced around over the years — it was higher in the mid-2010s — and the latest report shows more tires going into landfills.
However, there is a real good-news story under all this, and it’s worth saying plainly. Giant piles of abandoned tires, the kind that bred mosquitoes and caught fire back in the 1980s, have mostly been cleaned up. They dropped from more than a billion tires in 1990 to fewer than 48 million in 2023, a 95%-plus cleanup, and the recycling rate climbed from just 11% back then.
The question now is whether we can handle a quarter-billion new tires every year without leaning on incinerators to do it.
The Waste You Can’t Even See
Every recycling number measures the whole tire you hand to the shop. None of them measures the tire that’s already gone. As you drive, your tires slowly wear down. That missing rubber doesn’t vanish, it sheds onto the road as tiny bits called tire wear particles, then washes into storm drains and streams. Around the world, an estimated 6 million tons of tire bits enter the environment each year, making tires one of the largest sources of microplastics in water.
And this isn’t just litter. Tires contain a chemical called 6PPD that keeps the rubber from cracking. When it hits the air, it turns into a related chemical, 6PPD-quinone, which can be deadly. In a 2020 study in the journal Science, scientists found it was the reason huge numbers of coho salmon were dying in city streams after rainstorms, even in tiny amounts. The 79% number says nothing about any of this, because road dust never shows up at a recycling plant.
One of the biggest piles of tire waste is the one no rate tracks.
What Tires Cost You
Tires are an expense most people forget to budget for. In 2025 a single new tire ran about $192, and a full set of four usually costs somewhere between $460 and well over $1,200 — before you pay to mount, balance, and align them. Most tires last 40,000 to 70,000 miles, or roughly three to five years of normal driving.
The easiest way to spend less, not to mention waste less, is to make the tires you already have last longer. Just keeping them properly inflated can add thousands of miles. That’s money in your pocket and rubber out of the trash.
What You Can Do
Make your tires last longer
- Check your tire pressure once a month. Low pressure wears tires out faster than anything else — keeping them filled to the right pressure can add thousands of miles.
- Rotate your tires every 5,000 to 8,000 miles and get an alignment if the car pulls to one side or the tread wears unevenly. Tires that last longer are tires you never have to throw away.
- Shop for how long a tire lasts, not just the price tag. A longer-lasting tire often costs less per mile and makes less waste.
Get rid of old tires the right way
- Let the shop take them. When you buy new tires, the installer usually has to handle the old ones — that small disposal fee pays for the recycling system.
- Never dump or stockpile tires. Find a drop-off spot through the Earth911 Recycling Search instead of letting them pile up.
Cut down on the invisible pollution
- Drive a little gentler. Hard starts and hard stops grind off more rubber, and more of those tiny tire bits. Easier driving saves your tires and keeps road dust out of local water.
- Back local efforts to filter street runoff and find a safer replacement for 6PPD. Both are already in the works, and both need public funding to grow.
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