Reuse Of Old Tires As Garbage Cans In Cambodia

Automobiles have taken over the world. Automobiles generally have at least two to four tires. Tires generally only last a few years or so. Therefore, this is a world that is full of discarded old rubber tires.

So what do we do with them? Burn them? Nope. Stack them in a big pile in the backyard? That’s what my dad did but it’s probably not recommended. Build swings? Do we really need that many swings? Make crumb rubber athletic fields? Only if you want your kids getting lymphoma. So what can countries productively do with these rounded clumps of rubber?

They could recycle them in an environmentally appropriate, public health conscious way…..

(Right)

Or re-purpose them as something else.

Cambodia has taken the second route, and turns discarded car and motorbike tires into trash cans.

The streets of Sihanoukville are lined with trash receptacles that are the sum of rubber tires that have been cut up and strategically bolted together. The design is simple: some tires are splayed apart, flattened, and used for the walls and bottom, while the handles are made from tires that have been severed length-wise and slapped onto the sides.

These trash cans can be made anywhere by pretty much anybody who can wield a saw and a drill. The design is incredibly simple, and the natural contours of the tires match those of a trash receptacle, lending to a straightforward conversion.

From the looks of them they will also outlast pretty much any commercially available trash receptacle.