Shercom: Advancing Value-Added Products

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Imagine hundreds of thousands of tires cluttering landfills and wasting enormous real estate, often being a breeding site for insects or infestation. If caught on fire, they smoulder for days and release harmful emissions. Since 1993, Shercom Industries has been collecting, crushing and creating value-added products from tires in Canada, specifically, in Saskatchewan and Ontario. The corporate operation aligns with society's increasing environmentally responsible consciousness by recycling and reducing waste. By successfully farming tires, Shercom has collected, crushed and created value-added products from millions of pounds of crushed tire. To improve the durability of their speed bump and parking lot barrier/curb products, Shercom engineer, Landon Olsen, has teamed with Dr. Stilling at the University of Regina. Dr. Stilling draws on her expertise in value-added processing and product development from various waste streams to create biocomposites using crushed tire crumb and plastics. Reclaiming grain bags that litter the countryside provides a source of polyethylene that may be used to improve the strength and durability of Shercom's curb products. This NSERC Engage sponsored research and development specifically tackles the failures that occur near the securing bolt of the curb products, specifically, speed bumps. By improving material properties and optimizing design geometry, the functional strength and energy absorption and resilience may be better matched to absorb the impact from vehicles crossing the speed bump. The promise of fewer failures and increased product life improves marketability resulting in increased tires being returned for beneficial use.The research integrates property characterization for variations in product composition and manufacturing processes along with product designs to assess the functional performance of the speed bumps. The results will be an innovative polyethylene and tire crumb biocomposite formed into a functional end product for commercialized. The impact will be decreasing our footprint in landfills as tires and grain bags are reclaimed with Shercom manufacturing and marketing an improved product, nationally and internationally.