The WBCSD on the Tire Industry

Tires are essential to road and surface mobility, providing the moving surface of our many transport vehicles and the only contact point with the ground. Simple in appearance, tires are in fact very sophisticated products. Tire manufacturing involves a complex blend of materials and assembly processes to produce thousands of different products used on equipment as varied as urban bicycles and industrial earthmovers.

A typical tire includes dozens of different components, using more than one hundred primary raw materials, which must be precisely assembled and processed to achieve the right balance between many competing factors: grip, energy efficiency, handling, comfort and noise, to name a few.

Tire manufacturing is a complicated process. Source: Michelin

In looking to the future and following stakeholder concern about the potential environmental and health impacts of tire manufacturing and use, tire industry leaders have begun to look at several sustainability issues facing this sector, and how they can address them.

Established in January 2005, the goal of the Tire Industry Project (TIP), working under the umbrella of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), is to identify and address the potential health and environmental impacts of materials associated with tire making and use. This project is chaired by the three largest tire manufacturers – Bridgestone (Japan), Goodyear (US) and Michelin (France) – and includes a total of eleven companies representing approximately 80% of the world's tire manufacturing capacity.

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