It’s time to face facts. Your stalwart friends have carried you for thousands of kilometres, through thick and thin, through heat and snow, but they are reaching the end of their life. The end of their life as automobile tires anyway.

The amount of tires that reach the end of their life every year is truly staggering. Exact numbers aren’t currently available, but if you piled up every tire discarded in North America rest assured that you would have a really, really big pile of tires. Some estimates says that every year one tire gets to the end of the road for every man, woman, and child on the continent.

What to do with all these discarded is a bit of a head ache. Throwing them in landfills is simply wasteful. Not only do they take up landfill space we cannot afford to use, but tires are packed with energy and valuable plastics that present recycling techniques can help to reclaim.

Depending on how badly worn your tires are, you may be able to sell them to a used tire shop. If this is not an option, you may want to visit http://www.catraonline.ca/.

This is the site of the Canadian Association of Tire Recycling Agencies (CATRA). Formed in 1999, CATRA’s goal is to enhance scrap tire recycling across Canada and help keep tires out of landfills.

People often forget that recycling is just one way to keep stuff out of landfills. When it comes to tires, it is also possible to reuse them. We’ve already covered selling them, but if the tires are too worn this is not possible. However, there are other ways to reuse your old tires.

If you have enough used tires, you can build a house. Seriously. They are called Earthships, and they are environmentally friendly, not to mention beautiful, self-sufficient, and cheap to build.

If building an entire house seems a bit ambitious, then another option is to cut the tire in half like a biscuit. This makes a handy backyard water trough for your family dog. Painted, it makes an unusual planter for bedding plants.

Tires are hard to dispose of because they are very durable. But it is this very durability that makes them useful in a variety of outdoor applications. With a little creativity and effort you can keep them out of landfills and use them to make something beautiful.

The Goodyear Guy is the friendly face of Goodyear Canada...And now he blogs, not just any old blog mind you, nope - this one"s a doozy. So if the "behind-the-scenes" secrets of Goodyear Canada and their favourite spokeperson appeal to your curiosity check it out! Save $100 on your next set of Goodyear tires? Grab your digital rebate coupon today. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Guy_Goodyear

Bulges and indentations can be nothing to worry about or a serious problem.

Being made out of rubber (and a bunch of other stuff, but we’ll stick with rubber for now) tires are pretty flexible. They need to be, in order to deal with changing road conditions. Tires made entirely out of stone, regardless of what cartoonists would have us think, simply don’t work very well.

It is this very flexibility that helps to give modern tires their strength and resilience. However, it can also lead to indentations and bulges.

There’s nothing unusual about small indentations in the sidewall. These indentations (or “undulations” as they are sometimes called) are a purely visual condition. Tire performance is not affected at all. In fact, they are very often found on radial tires as a characteristic of the tire construction process. The indentations are more noticeable on larger tires, because of their taller sidewall, and on tires that operate at the higher end of the inflation pressure scale.

Tires are reinforced with cords of fabric, usually a synthetic such as polyester or nylon. Radial tires have at least one layer of these cords, more if it is a heavy duty tire. The cords run parallel to each other but sometimes overlap. This overlap can cause a slight indentation when the tire is inflated to full pressure.

These indentations may not look great, but they are harmless. Even if they appear on a newly installed tire you have no cause for alarm. The same cannot be said for bulges.

Bulges appearing on the sidewall of a recently installed tire are definitely bad news. In most cases, these bulges are the result of a space between some of the body ply cords inside the tire. When this happens with new tires the solution is simple: return the tire.

This situation is almost invariably covered under the manufacturer’s warranty. This is a workmanship/materials defect, and it is not the fault of the technician that installed the tire. Although tire manufacturer’s do a lot of testing before the tires reach the marketplace, this is a problem that just doesn’t show up until the tire is installed and inflated.

If you’re tires have developed a bulge a significant amount of time after being installed, then it probably isn’t the materials that are at fault. Ply cords, though by no means delicate, can be damaged by impacts with curbs or road hazards, or by running into potholes. If this happens, it’s time for a visit to your local tire dealer.

The Goodyear Guy is the friendly face of Goodyear Canada...And now he blogs, not just any old blog mind you, nope - this one"s a doozy. So if the "behind-the-scenes" secrets of Goodyear Canada and their favourite spokeperson appeal to your curiosity check it out! Save $100 on your next set of Goodyear tires? Grab your digital rebate coupon today. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Guy_Goodyear