Kent County Farm Bureau and Wilbur-Ellis have teamed up again to offer tire recycling to their members and customers. This year we were thrilled to receive a 2025 Scrap Tire Cleanup Grant from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE). The grant let us expand our event from one day to two days, and meant that we could ask for regular car tires as well as agricultural tires.
Last year we took in over 700 tires. This year we removed 3,359 tires from the environment!
We packed 4 semi trailers full with 2,811 car tires and 548 agricultural tires. The Farm Bureau volunteers and Wilbur-Ellis staff were masters of maximizing space, fitting small tires inside larger ones, and then throwing car tires on top when the ag tire pile got too high to add to.
There were fewer farmers who could say they were bringing tires that were older than they were, which was an improvement over last year. We hope that some day there won't be enough scrap tires to fill one semi trailer, but that won't be for awhile: most farmers still said they had more tires they could bring in.
Thank you to EGLE for the Scrap Tire Cleanup Grant! Thank you to Environmental Rubber Recycling for being one of the few companies that will not only take agricultural tires, but even take them still on the rim. Thank you to Wilbur-Ellis for partnering with us in this valuable endeavor. And finally, thank you to the farmers and farm workers who took time to bring tires and help load on a beautifully sunny and dry day when they could have been harvesting!