By Lillian Naftel and Amanda Gookin
In early May, paddlers from Friends of the North River and the Conservancy headed up the North River from Mount Crawford to Weyers Cave. What was forecast to be a grey, chilly day turned into sunny skies, making for perfect weather to be on the water. The purpose of the trip was to enjoy a nice float and scenery, and to help keep our waterways clean by picking up any trash floating along the way. The secondary purpose of the trip was to highlight the importance of public access points along our rivers, not just for human safety but also to boost outdoor recreation.
What I wasn’t expecting when I met the crew at the finish point was the quantity of trash that they had picked up along the way. Large pieces of plastic and, you guessed it, many, many tires. The narrow, steep, and muddy access point made cleanup challenging. The generous paddlers, one by one, rolled tires and muddy trash up the hill along with their heavy boats. Some people find tire flipping a fun workout, but our glutes weren’t prepared.
We left with a collective sentiment that the level of trash in the river felt insurmountable. And it was equally burdensome, physically, logistically, and financially, to recycle them properly.
I especially want to thank Friends of the North River for their stewardship efforts. We look forward to collaborating to advance conservation efforts to protect rural lands and enhance water quality!
With such limited public access to our rivers, how can we help keep them clean?
The Environmental Impact of Tires in Our Rivers
First, let’s talk about the detrimental impact of tires submerged in our waterways.
The Chemical Makeup of Tires
As of 2025, approximately 1.5 billion tires are produced each year. That’s a lot of tires that could end up in our rivers!
Tires contain organic compounds like carcinogenic Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs), Benzothiazoles (BTs), Phthalates, and other processed oils. These compounds can cause acute and chronic toxicity in freshwater organisms, primarily invertebrates.
The process of creating tires is called vulcanization. This is a complex chemical process that strengthens natural rubber by forming tough, hard-to-break links between long polymer chains with rubber’s chemical makeup. This is what makes tires so durable and resistant to wear, but it is also what makes tires so dangerous as a form of pollution.
Multiple studies show increased levels of heavy metals, such as zinc, lead, cadmium, and chromium, in seepage from waste tires. Zinc shows particularly high levels, as it is used during the vulcanization process. These metals can persist in our waterways long after our lifetimes and be extremely toxic, even in the smallest amounts.
Microplastics are also a major contaminant from tire pollution. These microplastics, along with larger rubber particles, are transported and accumulate throughout the food chain, especially in aquatic environments.
The Slow Leaching of Toxins
When submerged, tires begin to break down and leach contaminants into the environment.
Tires are complex chemical compounds. When submerged underwater, they act as slow-release capsules. Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) are the longest-lasting environmental contaminants from tires. POPs linger in ecosystems for decades to centuries and naturally resist degradation and slowly accumulate in the food chain.
The most dangerous aspect of these different POPs is their ability to bioaccumulate. Microscopic algae and bacteria absorb the POPs leaching from tire pollution into the water. Small invertebrates eat that algae. These chemicals are fat-soluble, so they do not exit the invertebrate in its waste; instead, they are stored in fatty tissue. Larger creatures, like trout, then eat the invertebrates, which concentrate the toxins. This process continues to the top of the food chain, where the concentration of POPs can be thousands to millions of times higher than it was in the water directly surrounding the tire.
As tires degrade, the rubber breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually forming microplastics. Tire particles are a distinct type of microplastic called thermoset microplastics. Unlike other microplastics, these tire particles are composed of synthetic rubbers, carbon black oils, and many chemical additives that help provide the elasticity and long-term endurance required in a tire.
TWPs (tire wear particles) are one of the most abundant sources of microplastic pollution in our waterways.
Why Is This Bad for the North River?
The North River flows through heavily forested headwaters to widespread intensive land use in the Valley. The water quality of this waterway is highest in its forested headwaters but degrades rapidly within approximately 8 kilometers of entering the Valley. A compounding effect occurs when chemicals from tire leachate mix with high nutrient loads of nitrogen and phosphorus, exacerbating the impact of both pollution sources.
The North River ranges from areas with low sediment pollution to those with high suspended sediment levels. In areas with high sediment rates, submerged tires trap sediments, alter existing flow pathways, and can disrupt or degrade habitats of benthic macroinvertebrates, such as mayfly nymphs. These macroinvertebrates are key indicators of water quality and play a large role in a freshwater food web. Trout largely eats these macroinvertebrates.
The North River has a well-documented history of mercury and zinc contamination associated with industrial activity in Waynesboro dating back to the early 20th century. Adding new tire dumps introduces fresh heavy metals into an environment already at its ecological limit.
Why Is Tire Recycling So Difficult?
The following is based on regional waste management data from the Northern Shenandoah Valley Regional Commission (NSVRC) and Rockingham County Landfill.
In Virginia and across the country, legal disposal of tires requires a per-tire fee at landfills. The current fee at the Rockingham County/Harrisonburg City Landfill ranges from $3 to $6 per tire. This fee is typically not the only deterrent to proper disposal. Most landfills also require that individuals transport their own tires to the landfill and remove the rims. Some waste facilities will not accept or charge more for tires above a certain size or in either too poor or too fair condition.
There are some state, local, or nonprofit programs that provide free tire disposal, but they are not widely advertised and typically require an application process.
Disposing of multiple tires at once, or any large tires, can quickly become costly. The North River has many unmonitored access points where the road backs up almost directly to the riverbank, making it easy for illegal dumping.
Recycling Tires
Recycling the rubber used to make tires is not readily accessible due to the difficulty of breaking down tire rubber and reusing it for other purposes. The strong polymer chains formed during the vulcanization process make tire rubber extremely durable and difficult to recycle.
In a circular economy, materials are ideally reused or recycled for their original purpose. To reuse old tire rubber in new tires, it must be recycled and used as a compounding ingredient in new tire production. For this to happen, old rubber must undergo a process called desulfurization, in which the vulcanized polymer chains are broken.
The only process currently available to allow 100% effective reuse of vulcanized rubber is a biotechnological approach that uses enzymes or microorganisms to digest the rubber without degrading it. Most other tire recycling options involve downcycling. Shredding tires for mulch or a substrate on roads or floors is the most widely used method. Some recycling methods include shipping old tires to developing countries to burn as an energy source, which carries its own humanitarian and environmental costs.
Other newer technologies that currently exist for desulfurization work, but also degrade carbon chains throughout the rubber, resulting in poor physical properties unfit for reuse in new, safe tires. These limitations make the reclamation of used tires difficult.
In conclusion, not only is it difficult for individuals to dispose of their used tires, but it is also difficult for the industry to reuse them economically. Ending with consumers bearing the burden of disposal and leading to the dumping of tires in our waterways.
It’s time to recommit to a developing a circular economy to reduce waste and pollution!
Turning the Tide
Is there any solution here?
Large-Scale Solutions
Currently, Virginia is a part of a Waste Tire Program enforced by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). This program primarily aims to address environmental hazards posed by tire piles. It includes storage limits, permits for salvage yards, and requires those disposing of tires to document all disposals.
What this program lacks are regulations around tires dumped in waterways and the risks they pose to wildlife and the entire aquatic ecosystem.
There is currently no work underway to reduce or eliminate the costs associated with tire disposal. Illegal disposal, especially in small amounts, is rarely prosecuted.
In other states, like Connecticut, legislation has been introduced requiring producers to bear responsibility for a product throughout its entire lifecycle. This is called Extended Producer Responsibility and Product Stewardship. This legislation would incentivize companies to incorporate environmental considerations into their products and would shift post-consumer management of products like tires from the consumer and public sector back to the producer.
This would not only reduce costs for individuals but also support the production of tires with more environmentally safe materials, thereby decreasing rates of toxic leaching.
Virginia could also implement a point-of-sale disposal fee that incorporates the cost of recycling directly into the cost of new tires at the time of purchase. This fee could directly fund the operation of free public disposal services.
Community-Level Solutions
Despite how common it is, illegal dumping is a crime in Virginia. If you witness someone dumping tires, you can report it anonymously through the DEQ. You can also call your local Sheriff’s office or non-emergency line. Record any associated license plate or vehicle description.
If you find any tire pollution, you can geotag it on apps like Marine Debris Tracker or Water Reporter. This helps organizations that host extraction events to remove pollution more effectively.
If you are getting rid of your old tires and do not want to pay the disposal fee, most Virginia counties host Tire Amnesty Days when the fee is waived. Unfortunately, Rockingham County does not currently have one.
How Can We Help
- Advocate for Rockingham County to host a Tire Amnesty Day.
- When buying new tires, support companies that use “take-back programs,” where they take old tires for disposal in exchange for the purchase of new tires.
- Take care of your vehicles! Keeping your car updated with proper tire inflation, rotations, and alignment can keep your tires safe for use for longer, limiting the number of tires that need to be disposed of.
- Pollution comes in all forms, and tires are trash, too!