Trinidad and To­ba­go faces the an­nu­al chal­lenge of dis­card­ing over a mil­lion used tyres, which of­ten clog up rivers and cre­ate an en­vi­ron­men­tal haz­ard.

But Plan­ning Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says re­search be­ing done by the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (CARIRI) and the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT), shows that old tyres can be re­pur­posed for road paving and the cre­ation of new rub­ber prod­ucts.

Speak­ing to re­porters dur­ing a tour of a $1 mil­lion Rub­ber Crumb Pro­duc­tion Fa­cil­i­ty in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, Beck­les said CARIRI is cur­rent­ly ex­per­i­ment­ing to as­sess the dura­bil­i­ty of the rub­ber mix­ture for road paving. 

She said rub­ber crumbs can al­so be used for man­u­fac­tur­ing rub­ber mats, lin­ings and oth­er prod­ucts for use in sport­ing and recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties.

Asked whether rub­ber crumbs in as­phalt paving could be help­ful to re­duce T&T’s bi­tu­men short­ages, Beck­les said this was not her area of tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise. How­ev­er, she said the test re­sults of the rub­ber crumb pi­lot project will be shared with the Works and Trans­port Min­istry for fur­ther as­sess­ment and analy­sis.

“Every per­son here to­day un­der­stands the sig­nif­i­cance of a project of this na­ture. It has tak­en a while in com­ing and I am pleased that CARIRI and UTT have seen to the use of tyres for projects like these,” Beck­les said.

She not­ed that the project has gen­er­at­ed in­ter­est from the Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (SWM­COL) as it can help re­duce the bur­den on the na­tion’s land­fills. She al­so said the project will al­low peo­ple to earn rev­enue from old tyres.

Say­ing it was part of the gov­ern­ment’s eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strate­gies, Beck­les said rub­ber crumbs have been used suc­cess­ful­ly in oth­er coun­tries for paving works in sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties and man­u­fac­ture of prod­ucts.

Mean­while, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of CARIRI Hans-Erich Schulz said T&T gen­er­ates 1.5 mil­lion used tyres an­nu­al­ly.

Many of these tyres end up in land­fills and are breed­ing grounds for mos­qui­toes, Schulz lament­ed.

“We are test­ing the tech­ni­cal fea­si­bil­i­ty for util­i­sa­tion of these tyres for road paving. Lat­er to­day we will be paving a strip of road­way in Tunupuna. An­oth­er test strip will be paved us­ing a stan­dard as­phalt mix de­sign,” he re­vealed.

He added: “Over the next year we will be test­ing and mon­i­tor­ing it to see how well it holds up to weath­er and traf­fic. The idea is to use hard da­ta.”

Schulz al­so agreed that the rub­ber crumb fa­cil­i­ty of­fers a way to safe­ly dis­pose of old tyres and re­cy­cle them for us­es which are both en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly ben­e­fi­cial.

Mean­while, UTT pres­i­dent Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad said the project was part of the uni­ver­si­ty’s man­date to pro­mote re­search and de­vel­op­ment. He said aside from the rub­ber crumbs fa­cil­i­ty, UTT stu­dents have de­vel­oped in­no­v­a­tive prod­ucts, in­clud­ing a spe­cial brew made with chatagne seeds, pro­vid­ing a cof­fee-like taste.