Recycled Rubber Mulch Reduces Tires in Landfills by 90%

It’s the beginning of Spring and the end of the day. You are completely worn out from shoveling wood chips onto all your trees and flowerbeds.

As you sip iced tea and compliment yourself on a job well done, you are thrilled to be done with this chore…until this time next year.

But mulching doesn’t have to be an annual job. Rubber mulch puts an end to the yearly mulching chore.

No Annual Mulching with Rubber Mulch

Rubber mulch retains its beautiful look and color season after season. It allows 100% of the water to reach the plants because it won’t compact the soil and the airflow allows plants to thrive all year round.  Consequently, no more annual mulching.

“Typically when people mulch their landscape, they do not remove old wood mulch. They just put more on top to improve the curb appeal of their property,” says Mike Sebastian of International Mulch Company in St. Louis, MO.  “As wood mulch breaks down, it becomes a barrier, which is not good for the plants. Rubber mulch does not compact or rot even after years of exposure to the elements.”

Recycled Rubber Mulch Has Many Uses

Mike sees how eager educated homeowners are for recycling tires into mulch recycled rubber. “We have the opportunity to educate millions and millions of homeowners each year because the product is sold by all the large retailers, such as Lowe’s, Ace, Menard’s and True Value,” he says.

International Mulch Company began with a single product, Rubberific Mulch, which is a realistically-textured mulch. From homeowner requests, the company expanded its line to include rubber nugget playground mulch, tree rings, timbers, mats, landscape edging, splash blocks and landscape borders.

More than 200,000 emergency room visits occur each year as a result of playground falls. Recycled rubber mats and rubber playground mulch help minimize injuries from playground accidents because the mulch acts as a cushion. ”Often homeowners comes to us after their child has been injured from a playground fall.  Our rubber groundcovers, Rubberific Mulch, NuPlay, RePlay and NuScape, are the safest groundcovers available,” Mike says. Even the Environmental Protection Agency says recycled rubber products are safe.

The company’s vision of eliminating tires in landfills has almost become a reality. In 1990 not many thought that tires had a second life. More than 1 billion discarded tires were stockpiled at various locations across the country. Fewer than 11% were re-used, and there was no market for them. They sat in scrap yards or were buried in a landfill.  Today, there’s a market for nearly 90% of all scrap tires and the company estimates the number is now fewer than 200 million.”

 This really shows a commitment to recycling and what can be done if companies and homeowners put their minds to it,” says Cindy Miller, the company’s vice president. “International Mulch Company started off as a business of ‘what if?’ and is evolving into one that is driven by customers asking ‘can you?’” says “Our products must live up to their promises and we need to find new uses each and every year to keep up with demand.”