Project Clean-Up: 70 tons of tires taken to Denver City for recycling after Tire Round-Up

AMARILLO, Texas (KFDA) - For our biggest Project Clean-Up yet, known as the Tire Round-Up, NewsChannel 10 and our partners Fuller and Sons, Joe the Plumber, Starlight Ranch and King Country Trailer and Tire collected more than 70 tons of tires.

Before Saturday, we targeted a few illegal dumping sites and loaded two trailers of tires. Saturday, people from throughout the Panhandle brought their tires to Starlight Ranch and filled another five trailers to total seven trailers of tires.

To get an early start, some people arrived as early as 5 a.m., and many others arrived hours before the 10 a.m. start time.

When our crews started to arrive at 7:30 a.m., the line quickly grew to wrap around Starlight Ranch and out onto the I-40 access road, extending almost a full mile past Memorial Park Funeral Home & Memorial Park Cemetery.

The response was so big, the drop off was shut down early with seven semis filled to the brim.

“The problem is just overwhelming in our city and in the Panhandle,” said NewsChannel 10 General Manager Brent McClure. “We could not take them all but we made a dent in the clean-up, but it is up to everyone to help. We will continue this journey with our partners to clean-up our area. We thank everyone that helped and that came out.”

Monday morning, the trip started at 6 a.m. to haul three semi-trailers to a rubber recycling and processing plant in Denver City to be recycled.

The load tipped the scales at over 32 tons combined in the three trailers.

The plant will now shred them and to break down the rubber.

We’re told that 99.2 percent of the rubber recycled at the plant goes to road asphalt.

The community spirit was in full this weekend with hundreds of cars and trucks showing up with stories about their gathering of tires to help.

One Amarillo resident, Mary Haschke, said she collected a trailer full of tires in her own neighborhood to bring to the Tire Round-Up.

“I went up and down some alleys and got a few out of the alleys,” said Haschke. “We had some in a shed out in the backyard. I just wanted to get rid of them so we could make our community more safe for the children and trash free.”

Our partners worked extremely hard, and when asked why, they said because this is their community.

“This is my community, and we have the resources to be able to help, so it’s important to Fuller and Sons,” said Mike Fuller, with Fuller and Sons Construction. “Tires are a problem because you can’t just drop them wherever you want to. They have to be ground up. They’re recyclable, but it’s quite a process to get them recycled, and there’s no place in Amarillo that does that.”

King Country Trailer and Tire supplied the semi trailers and helped load the tires up on Saturday. They said they are trying to help Amarillo learn how to properly dispose of tires.

“Today is really to try to bring awareness to the problem we’re having in the City of Amarillo with tires being dumped everywhere. We’re trying to help the public, as well as the City of Amarillo to gain traction on getting these tires properly disposed,” said Gunner Don Wilkins, with King Country Trailer and Tire.

Project Clean-Up has cleaned up areas of Amarillo for six months now, and tires is a huge issue.

We are proud to have community supporters like our partners to jump into a project that takes money, resources and valuable time to make a large impact like this weekend’s activities.

Lessons were learned and when it is available, we will hold another Project Clean-Up Tire Round-Up.

Our friends that could not fit their tires in the trailers, wait and we will let you know the next time we gather up tires, or work with a local tire dealer to dispose of the tires.