A mainstay of playgrounds across the country, rubber mulch is a cost-effective way to ensure kids on the playground remain safe from fall-related injuries. Just 4 to 6 inches of rubber mulch is sufficient to mitigate the brunt of a 12-foot fall, precluding the most serious injuries from impacting children at play.
That said, few are aware of just how rubber mulch is made, as well as the processes that go into ensuring its safety and effectiveness. Producing rubber mulch is an intensive process with multiple steps to ensure quality and safety, as well as the integrity of the mulch itself. Read on to learn more about these steps, as well as how they impact the final product:
Repurposing old tires has been done for decades, but the process of turning them into rubber mulch is a fairly new invention. Theoretically, any rubber tire, big or small, can be used to produce rubber mulch, but vehicle tires are highly sought after due to their high rubber content and availability. Were they not used to create rubber mulch, many of these tires would otherwise end up in landfills, where they’d languish for years and take up space unnecessarily. By recycling old car and truck tires, rubber mulch producers breathe new life into otherwise obsolete products.
Once the tires have been obtained and selected for recycling, they’re fed into an industrial tire grinder with multiple layers of steel teeth to finely grind the tires down into smaller pieces of rubber. From there, the rubber is fed into another shredder, which cuts the material down into different shapes and sizes, one of which is rubber mulch for playground and landscaping purposes.
Once the mulch emerges from the shredder, it’s placed into a high-intensity, conveyor belt-fed magnet that sucks out the steel and other extraneous metals once present in the rubber tires. The end result of this step is that the rubber mulch will be upwards of 99 percent metal-free, thus ensuring that kids won’t be poked or prodded by any steel leftover from the rubber mulch production process.
While this is an optional step, many customers prefer to purchase rubber mulch that’s brightly colored over regular, unpainted black mulch. Once the mulch has undergone the metal removal process, it’s then tumbled in separate machines that contain paint. The mulch is tumbled for a few minutes in the non-toxic paint mixture until each nugget is fully covered. Once finished, the mulch is ready to be weighed and packed into sacks or bags, after which they can be loaded onto pallets to ensure easy and prompt delivery.
Find more about the author: Kim Hart
