They’re starting small, but Maxxis is pulling a bit more plastic from the seas with their upcoming Green Recycle tire casings made from recycled fishing nets. The environmental benefit is (theoretically) doubled considering they’re not producing new plastic to make their nylon casings, too.
The new casings will come on base-level commuter and city tires first as they increase testing to make sure it’ll meet expectations for higher performance mountain bike tires, but the plan is to use it across most of their portfolio.
The process starts by pulling lost and discarded fishing nets from the ocean. They say about 12.7 million tons of marine debris is formed annually, and about 640,000 tons of that comes from fishing gear. Called “ghost fishing gear”, it can damage reefs, kill sealife, and generally pollute.
The plastic nets are collected and cleaned, then turned into fresh nylon plastic pellets. Seawastex says their process, performed with Formosa Chemical & Fibre Corporation, creates a product with the same tensile strength, impact resistance, and weather resistance as virgin material. They provide recycling collection methods to help prevent the waste from getting left in the ocean in the first place, too.
Those are melted and extruded into yarn, which is then woven into the casings. Effectively, it should work just like virgin nylon, but Maxxis is doing long-term testing to ensure the performance characteristics are the same.
From there, the casing is laid up with other materials to form the tire’s carcass before being heat molded into shape, forming the tread patterns and bonding everything together to create a ride-able tire.
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