Texas reused 135,389 old tires in San Angelo road projects; the recycled rubber was used in pavement to help improve road durability and divert waste from landfills

Imagine taking every single tire you’ve ever had to replace on your car, adding all the ones every driver in a medium-sized city replaces, and then having them all shredded together to make asphalt for your road. This is exactly what happened in San Angelo, Texas. According to the Texas Department of Transportation, the San Angelo District recently used 135,389 tires as part of local road projects. Recycled in the form of pavements, it helped improve the durability of the roads and keep a large collection of tires out of landfills. Their effort was recognised with an Environmental Achievement Award. This result points to a larger pattern: the approximately 230 million tires the USA generates every year.

America’s tire pile is bigger than you think

We usually don’t give any thought to what happens to our tires after they’ve been taken away. However, when combined with every car, truck, and SUV in the nation, it creates a huge amount of waste. In 2023, approximately 79% of end-of-life tires were reclaimed or recycled, according to USTMA’s 2023 End-of-Life Tire Management Report, up from 71% in 2021. USTMA has since released a newer report, covering 2025 data, which also puts the reclamation rate at 79%.

However, it also shows that recycling of tires is not keeping up with the number of tires created every year in the nation. This means there are still stockpiles in several states. Old tires can cause problems if left to build up. They can hold water, creating breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and can be a huge fire risk that can burn for weeks. For the last three decades, the tire industry and state transport departments have been trying to find new uses for this waste. One of the best solutions is using them in roads.

How a worn-out tire becomes part of a highway

The process is relatively simple. The old tires are shredded down into crumb rubber. This is then mixed into an asphalt binder to create what is known as rubber-modified asphalt (RMA). The technique dates back to the 1960s and has since been used by a number of states, including Texas and California, though, widespread adoption is still limited.

A research review titled “State of Knowledge Report on Rubber Modified Asphalt,” conducted in 2021 by USTMA, the non-profit group called The Ray, and the University of Missouri’s Center for Transportation Innovation, looked into the science behind this technology. It found that RMA extends pavement life, reduces road noise, lowers rolling resistance, which can modestly improve fuel economy, and produces fewer tire-and-road-wear particles compared with conventional asphalt. Broader use of RMA could, in principle, ease some of the wear on the country’s aging road network, though this effect hasn’t been directly measured at a national scale.

Not a miracle solution

However, the researchers were clear that there is still limited data available and more independent long-term research is needed. Rubberised asphalt can be more costly to use in many cases when compared to normal asphalt, Iwhich is part of why, despite six decades of use, only a handful of states have adopted it widely, leaving tens of millions of tires still stockpiled across the country. San Angelo’s 135,389 tires are a genuine win, but they’re a small fraction of the national total. Recycling rubber into roads is a sound idea that deserves wider adoption. How slowly it has spread says something about the pace of change in American infrastructure more broadly.