There are tires in the woods nearly everywhere in western Pennsylvania. Singles, pairs and piles of tires. Tires rolled down the hillsides into the hollows. Tires dumped on top of trash. Tires too heavy to lift, left by the side of the road.
I’d say this is a uniquely Appalachian problem but it happens across the U.S. Dumping tires is illegal but people do it because they think it’s expensive to dispose of them properly. In fact it’s cheap — about $2 per passenger tire in PA — and it’s easy to find a disposal place that’s probably closer than the illegal dump site. Just type in your zip code at the Earth911 website.
Waste tires are ugly breeding grounds for mosquitoes. They leach toxins into soil and water and when they start to burn they’re hard to stop.
Now that the woods are greening up the tires will be harder to see, but they’re still there.
You can do something about it. Join a local cleanup. See the links on this Pennsylvania map.
In Pittsburgh this Friday May 6, come down to Duck Hollow for the Tireless Cleanup, 5:00-7:30pm. Here’s what NMRWA removed during the 2014 cleanup:
http://ninemilerun.org/events/tireless-cleanup-at-duck-hollow/
(photos at top by Kate St. John, photo of a tile pile at Duck Hollow by Nine Mile Run Watershed Association)
They make nice planters! Take them home, paint them, stack them, fill them with soil and plant your favorite flowers!!
Donna Cook, tire planters are OK in the short-term but bad news in the long term because they decompose and leach into soil & water: http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/recycled-tire-planters-zmaz09fmzpit.aspx
I wouldn’t plant vegetables in there(!)
When our volunteer group cleaned up the stretch of Chartiers Creek along the industrial highway downstream from the Thornburg Bridge (where Rt 60 crosses the creek) from Crafton to Windgap, we used to fill an entire dumpster and still have to pile the extra tires alongside it!! After a few years of cleanups with just as much, if not more, garbage the next year, the volunteers got really TIREd of it.
The real issue should be when the state collects the $2 disposal fee. Instead of collecting it at disposal, if they would change it and add the fee to the purchase of new tires, thus making the disposal “free” it would almost eliminate new tires being added to what in many place is serious problem.
I agree WTS! Perhaps even more enticing? Tire deposits!
—> Charge $5.00 per tire at purchase
—> Receive $3.00 as a “tire deposit” at return
—? The state still collects the $2 disposal fee
For those who are still lazy idiots and dump, there are many others who would go collect tires just to make money (besides helping to clean up the environment). The details about all the “old” tires out there could be worked out somehow… Perhaps $2.50 for newer tires leaving $0.50 for old tires collected, etc
Container/bottle deposits are very effective (Michigan for example) to curb trash and encourage recycling. For tires, it would have to be a uniform law across the country. (Otherwise if only ONE state had this they would be DELUGED with tires from surrounding states… see the Seinfeld episode on “The Bottle Deposit”) 🙂
With Zika on our doorstep, couldn’t this be one (small) ounce of prevention?
Great idea, Jan!
That is a great idea. I was walking in the woods and i see a lot of tires. Some of them are not even in the woods and just on the sides of neighborhood streets. This would definitely help motivate people to clean up, not just tires, but regular trash.