Bike tire company Schwalbe has expanded its tube recycling program to customers in France and Italy.
Used bicycle inner tubes can now be returned to specialist retailers in those countries. They will be sent back to Schwalbe in bundles, recycled using a devulcanization process developed in-house and used to produce new products.
Schwalbe says its standard inner tube already contains around 20% recycled raw material. The company says that the recycling process reduces energy consumption by 80% compared with the production of the same amount of new butyl.
Since the start of the tube recycling program in 2015, more than 10 million tubes have been recycled. The addition of France and Italy brings the number of participating countries to 10, the others being Germany, Austria, the UK, Benelux, the USA, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.
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