Michelin turning plastic bottles to tyres

Every year, a total of 1.6 billion car tyres are sold worldwide. The PET fibres used in these tyres represent 800,000 tonnes of PET per year.

When applied specifically to Michelin – this represents nearly three billion plastic bottles per year that could be recycled into technical fibres for use in the company’s tyres.

Now, the French tyre maker has revealed it has successfully validated the use of Carbios’ enzymatic recycling technology for PET plastic waste in its tyres. Michelin says this is a major step towards developing 100 per cent sustainable tyres.

Nicolas Seeboth, director of polymer research at Michelin says: “We are very proud to be the first to have produced and tested recycled technical fibres for tyres. These reinforcements were made from coloured bottles and recycled using the enzymatic technology of our partner, Carbios.

“These high-tech reinforcements have demonstrated their ability to provide performance identical to those from the oil industry.”

Michelin is now applying Carbios’ enzymatic recycling process for PET plastic waste, in order to create a high tenacity tyre fibre that meets its technical requirements.

The application of PET enzymatic recycling in car tyres is said to be a world first.

Conventional thermomechanical recycling processes for complex plastics do not achieve the PET high-performance grade required for pneumatic applications.

However, the monomers resulting from Carbios’ process, which used coloured and opaque plastic waste such as bottles, once repolymerized in PET, made it possible to obtain a high tenacity fibre meeting Michelin’s tyre requirements.

The technical fibre obtained is of the same quality as the one from virgin PET, processed with the same prototype installations. This high tenacity polyester is particularly suitable for tyres, due to its breakage resistance, toughness, and thermal stability.

Michelin says Carbios’ enzymatic recycling process therefore enables it to get one step closer to its sustainable ambitions, and contributes to the entry of tyres into a true circular economy. Michelin aims to achieve 40 per cent sustainable materials (of renewable or recycled origin) by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2050.