DH wanted to fence off that section and was going to buy some cattle panels, and decided, heck he had some tires so he dreamed up the idea of using them. We had plenty of old tires lying about. Then Jamie said he had some we could have, so we have hauled 3 trailer loads from his place, last one today. Neighbors started stopping by to see what he was doing with all those tires and they brought us a couple of loads. After doing that section, he has done another section between the old garden space and the horse pasture. They seem to be doing the job and putting useless tires to use. He has brought 8 big tractor tires down to the shop, cut them out at the top and filled them with composted manure so I can plant in them. It's been tire mania the past few weeks here. Donna

The big tractor tires would make a great low wall before the street ,often people have people parking in front of their home & they get so upset, I suggested rocks to friend & that worked for her as guy lived across the street & parked on her grass strip but had it all tore up She planted couple of low shrubs between rocks & guy gave up(didn't want to damage his precious truck )but this would be classy with 5 of more out there & nobody would want to mess around with those . Tea cup is so cute too. Especially with the pink flowers in center, perfect!

Tires can even be used to create retaining walls to stabilize an earth bank. When using them for this purpose, begin by laying a level course of tires. Fill these tires completely with sand, soil, or gravel. Try to eliminate any holes or pockets in the tires that might provide a haven to vermin like mice or rats. Atop the first course of filled tires, add another row, positioning them one-quarter to one-third of the way back on the first course. This will give the wall some slope and add stability. Also, place the tires with staggered joints, that is, in bricklayer-fashion.

Tire recycling sounds good on the surface, but it's masking the real issues. Although there are no standard definitions for the word recycling, I'd prefer not to use it to describe materials that loose quality and value like tires do when allegedly recycled. Reprocessed would be a more fitting term. You cannot turn a tire in to another tire, instead it is ground up and the remains used for various things like garden mulch or fillers to bulk out other materials. Since these secondary products have minimal, if any ability to be processed again, and the rubber itself was allready hard to reprocess as a tire and is now further degraded, once worn out these items will go straight back in to the non-recyclable waste stream. Here they will cause just as much environmental damage as the original tires would have if they were throw away in the first place. Tire recycling is waste taking the scenic route to the landfill. Further still, this reprocessing of tires makes it more economically viable to make this waste as it now has a value, rather than do something useful like reduce the number of tires being made in the first place. The reason the tire industry is working hard to reprocess tires, or as they call it recycle, is because it helps hide the environmental and financial damage they cause when thrown away. Instead of consumers seeing a tire mountain and reading grim statistics about the number of tires thrown away or the damage they cause each year, they can read a nice eco-friendly statement about how X percent of tires are now recycled and that tires are a nice industy. After all, we're not throwing away millions of tons of tires any more, we're now throwing away loads of garden mulch, fillers and asphalt, which will somehow be conveniantly detached from the tire industry. *POP* in a cloud of magic smoke, marketing and a bit of deception, the offending tires are gone! As for turning tires in to asphalt, aparently it does use a lot more tar to bind the mixture, but it also creates a much stronger longer lasting road surface, plus it's more skid resistant and safer. Long term the safety improvements and savings from not having to replace it as soon would make it the sensible choice, but here in the UK, as in many places, road works are contracted out. Why would a contractor spend more money to install a better surface, only to be rewarded with not being called back as soon to replace it?