How Cubic 38 Is Using Recycled Tyres To Make Shoe Polish
How Cubic 38 Is Using Recycled Tyres To Make Shoe Polish. For South Africa, waste includes a stockpile of up to 100 million used tyres, with around 11 million more tyres adding to the mountain every year. Unlike other waste products, like aluminium or glass, rubber tyres aren’t so easy to recycle; they take up huge amounts of space, and burning them releases dangerous toxins into the air.
24-year old Mzokhona Maxase has a solution, setting up a company called Cubic 38 to help deal with some of the waste materials derived from unwanted tyres. More specifically, Maxase wants to turn tyres into products that can be used on a daily basis. “We currently have two products made from waste tyre char, which is our tyre shine and shoe polish,” Maxase explained to Redbull’s in an interview. In the future, once the social enterprise is more established, Maxase wants to expand the product line-up to include inks. Johannesburg-based Cubic 38 was created after Maxase finished a degree in logistics management at Tshwane University of Technology.
The entrepreneur wanted to solve the issue of what to do with used tyres, not least because of the sheer scale of waste and the impact it’s having on the environment worldwide. “Cubic 38 was founded with the main purpose of creating eco-friendly alternatives from waste tyres,” Maxase told Redbull on their website. “There are great programs nationally and internationally that assist in tyre recycling, one of them being waste tyre pyrolysis – a process that heats whole or shredded tires in an oxygen-free reactor vessel.” That process helps to break down tyres, but it also results in unwanted byproducts including char. It’s this residue that Cubic 38 uses in the creation of their own products. “We source our waste tyre char in its raw state from local waste tyre recycling plant,” Maxase adds. “They give it to us for free, due to the surplus volumes and limited use. Overall this will make a big impact in waste tyre recycling efforts, and through these efforts we will see more businesses venturing into waste tyre recycling.”
Cubic 38 is actually Maxase’s first venture, although it’s not his first idea. “I’ve always had ideas in the past that I couldn’t bring to life due to a lack of resources and limited skills,” Maxase told Redbull in an interview. “It’s especially difficult when you’re trying to do things differently or you’re doing things that have not been done before.”
As an enterprise still finding their feet, Cubic 38 and Maxase have a busy few years coming up, and the entrepreneur concludes: “We are looking to refine our two main products to ensure they address the specific needs of our customers. By the year 2020, we want to start official product manufacturing. We intend to work closely with external stakeholders, including the community and waste tyre recycling plants, helping us to create a value chain for waste tyres and to educate people about the endless possibilities and opportunities that waste tyres hold.”
