The Alliance of Future Tires (AZuR) is continuing to drive cooperation in the field of end-of-life tire recycling. Since 2020, the AZuR network has been working to make tire disposal more cost-effective and environmentally friendly. For ten months, the network was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), and since June 2021, it has been self-funded under the auspices of the WDK. There are currently 44 diversified partners in the network.

The building materials company Heidelberg Cement has been an AZuR partner since November 2021. In the cement manufacturer’s works, used tires are used as a secondary material and thus recycled in a sensible way.

The new partnership with HeidelbergCement is a great win for the AZuR used tire recycling innovation forum. Because the building materials company is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of cement, aggregates and ready-mixed concrete and is the first thermal recycler in the AZuR network. This means that all recycling routes for used tires - tire retreading, material, chemical and thermal recycling - are now represented at AZuR.

In December, Stadtwerke Osnabrück also joined the network.

As a central infrastructure service provider, Stadtwerke Osnabrück supplies the city and region of Osnabrück with electricity, gas and water and operates the city bus service, the port and leisure facilities. The municipal utility is currently planning to build a recycling plant to recover raw materials from old tires. In line with this, Stadtwerke Osnabrück are now involved in the Alliance for Future Tires (AZuR): as a new partner of the AZuR network, which came together in 2020 to find new ways of forward-looking and sustainable end-of-life tire recycling. This primarily includes retreading, but also material, chemical and thermal recycling.

In order to get closer to the goal of being able to recycle 100% of old tires in the future, AZuR would also like to intensify its cooperation with universities and research institutions.

The network is growing continuously: with Stadtwerke Osnabrück and Heidelberg Cement, 43 partners now belong to AZuR - including companies, associations and research institutions, all of which are related to the topic of tires. AZuR has set itself the task of using projects and public relations work to make the topic of used tire recycling better known, to promote cross-industry exchange between market players from the tire segment and to promote new recycling methods. In order to counteract the disposal problem, AZuR plans to completely recycle as many end-of-life tires as possible in the spirit of the circular economy. This is intended to conserve valuable resources and reduce waste - for a greener future.