Working to Promote Material Sustainability
through Awareness and Action

The Rubber Impact Project uses an educational and interventionist approach in addressing transportation rubber issues. The project engages across the full lifecycle of inner tubes and tires, acknowledging the complexity of issues that surround their use, in order to raise awareness about rubber’s environmental and human impacts and to promote actions in support of zero waste. 

The goal is to shift the public’s mindset towards a culture of appropriate upcycling and reuse; to disrupt the current bicycle inner tube waste stream in favor of a waste flow that keeps inner tubes and tires in a circular rubber economy; and to pressure the transportation rubber industry to move toward greater material sustainability.

Recipients of the 2019 Impact Award and Fellowship from California College of the Arts Center for Impact

Material ConneXion, included RIP’s waste inner tube rubber sample set in their New York City library, the largest library of innovative, sustainable materials. This was the first inclusion of a self sourced waste material and further legitimized self-sourcing for direct reuse.
Click to view Material Catalog

The Rubber Impact Project is a collaboration between Mandana MacPherson and Gigi Obrecht. Our work has been presented at sustainability conferences, longlisted for the International Dezeen Design Awards, installed on college campuses, included in SFUSD curricular offerings, and exhibited at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art.

-Click to enlarge Flow Chart Infographic
-10 minute video slideshow presented at the 2021 On Sustainability Research Network’s International Academic Conference in Amsterdam

Infographic: Expanded Inner Tube Lifecycle for a Circular Transportation Rubber Economy

Infographic: Inner Tube Lifecycle for a Circular Transportation Rubber Economy

The Rubber Impact Project utilizes art and design activism to draw attention to transportation rubber issues, including environmental impacts, material responsibility, reuse opportunities, and dichotomies in the allure and danger of materials. We draw from our shared interest in how art and design can reshape culture. We highlight what is familiar yet overlooked. Our work in addressing society’s impacts includes data analysis and explorations across media, harnessing the experiential and visual. The goal is to engage viewers in a variety of emotions, in order to connect on a personal level and be moved to action. Environmental impacts have taken center stage in our Anthropocene Epoch, our goal is to put rubber under the spotlight to affect positive environmental and social change.

San Francisco discards over 100,000 bicycle tubes every year, enough to wrap the Golden Gate bridge 33 times. In this dead-end material flow, rubber goes straight to landfill, its resource value lost.  Inner tube rubber is an extraordinary material with many potential uses once it can no longer function inside a tire.  Reusing materials conserves global resources and reduces pollution and green-house gas emissions. So keep this material resource in play and support zero waste through material reuse.

Granular waste tire rubber escapes technical recycling loops and infiltrates our natural environment

Transportation rubber is ubiquitous and valued in our everyday lives. It provides safety, durability, and utility. In the United States, used tires and inner tubes generally return to a point of sale location when replaced with new tires and tubes. Because the waste rubber does not have to be collected and sorted from other post consumer recyclables, the potential for success in material recycling and reuse is dramatically increased. However, to keep up with a never ending flow of waste rubber, many of these tubes are simply thrown away; and many of the tires are ground into a ‘crumb rubber’ marketed and shipped for a variety of consumer uses. This granular rubber, a suspected carcinogen, escapes technical recycling loops and infiltrates our natural environment. The unchecked dispersal of synthetic particulates toxifies our living world, creating negative impacts for land, sea, and air. 

A Synthesis of Microplastic Sources and Pathways to Urban Runoff
SFEI Tire Particles Fact Sheet
SFEI Tire Sources in the Urban Environment Diagram (SFEI)

Recent studies show that up to 30% of microplastics in the ocean are tire rubber. Local research points to road wear from car tires as the biggest likely source of microplastics in California coastal waters. Although a lesser contributor, the scatter of ground up crumb rubber requires consideration. Limited research has been done nationwide to assess how crumb rubber used for athletic fields, playgrounds, and mulch contributes to the volume of rubber microplastics in the environment. In consultation with scientists at California educational organizations and institutes studying water and microplastics, (including the San Francisco Estuary Institute, the Scripps Institute at UC San Diego, and Southern California Coastal Waters Research Project), the Rubber Impact Project is advocating for research, similar to European studies, that directly addresses the tire shred layer in artificial turf and its delivery to the ocean.

Microplastic Pollution from Artificial Grass – A Field Guide
Artificial turf and crumb rubber infill: An international policy review
A toxic cocktail in seawater – chemicals from car tire rubber
Consequences of Rubber Crumb Application: Soil and Water Pollution

Each year 1 billion end-of-life tires are generated worldwide. A lack of transparency and oversight perpetuates an invasive material presence with a significant contribution to microplastics pollution.