Dumping

The US has 2 billion old tires in landfills, deposits, and yards. This year alone, over 300 million tires will be retired in the US. 82% of these will be recycled or reused in some manner. Of the remaining 54 million, many will inevitably end up in a lake, river bed, or ocean floor, contributing to the 14 billion tons of trash dumped annually. Because tires are designed to last for years of service and withstand vast amounts of friction, temperature changes, and high impacts, it also virtually impossible for nature to break them down.

Nobody knows the exact time it takes for a tire to break down completely, but under different circumstances could be as short as 100 years or as long as tens of thousands. Some studies suggest that because of the additives to prevent bacteria from damaging the tires, they may take millions of years to break down! When tires start to break apart, they release vast amounts of contaminants into the water and soil. When dumped into the ocean, they cannot become a seeding ground for corals, as shown by the failure of Osborne reef off the coast of Florida.

This piece intends to show some of our watersheds’ problems with trash and dumping by focusing on tires dumped in the water. It is a computer-generated animation that depicts tires slowly sinking on the top panels and tires hitting bottom and accumulating on the bottom panels.