Pirelli, Pyrum, Synthos and BASF are jointly advancing a tire-to-tire circular economy initiative in Europe, driving the development of an industrial ecosystem designed to increase the use of recycled materials derived from end-of-life and scrap tires.
The initiative draws on end-of-life tires collected across Germany, including from select Driver retail outlets and motorsport activities, together with scrap tires collected from Pirelli’s Breuberg plant. These tires pass through an industrial chain designed to maximize their inner value, converting them into secondary raw materials, including synthetic rubber, certified under the ISCC PLUS scheme. This certification provides traceability along the value chain and allows the circular materials to be reintroduced into the manufacturing of new Pirelli tires, while maintaining Pirelli’s highest standards of quality and performance.
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Converts tires into recovered carbon black and pyrolysis oil
Within this process, Pyrum converts end-of-life and scrap tires through pyrolysis, a high-temperature thermal decomposition of materials in the absence of oxygen, into two secondary raw materials: recovered carbon black (rCB) and tire pyrolysis oil (TPO). The recovered carbon black is upgraded in quality and reintroduced directly into Pirelli’s European production, partially replacing virgin carbon black.
BASF receives the tire pyrolysis oil and co-feeds it with fossil-based feedstock into the production process for chemical products such as butadiene and styrene. A mass balance approach attributes the recycled content to BASF’s ISCC PLUS-certified Ccycled® products.
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ISCC PLUS-certified synthetic rubber from recovered materials
These circular materials are then used by Synthos to produce ISCC PLUS-certified synthetic rubber for high-performance tire applications. Pirelli reintroduces this synthetic rubber into its production processes, closing the loop.
The project reflects that genuine product circularity cannot be achieved by a single company acting alone. It requires industrial ecosystems involving players with complementary expertise, each contributing to a different phase of the transformation process around a shared material loop.
Through collaboration and the combination of technological innovation, material science and certified processes, the partners, driven by Pirelli, build a coordinated system in which materials are recovered, transformed and reused by maximizing their inner value.
The European tire-to-tire project represents the most comprehensive application of this approach to date, demonstrating how end-of-life tires can become a valuable resource within a structured and traceable industrial loop.