By Walter Hojka
If you were traveling on 220 S. on Saturday morning, your trip may have been slowed by pick-up trucks loaded full with tires. But the wait was due to a good cause. The vehicles were all heading to the tire collection site at the Pendleton Business Park on Thorn Creek Road.
At 11 a.m. a line of vehicles stretched halfway around the building waiting patiently for their opportunity to drop off used tires. According to Aaron Miller, coordinator for the event, vehicles were lined up as much as an hour before the drop-off began.
The 10-tire limit was neither enforced or observed as one participant brought in as many as 50 tires he had reclaimed from along the road and in the waterways.
In all, more than 5,000 tires were collected in a single day. Miller credits the success to the Pendleton County Economic Development Authority for an excellent job advertising the event.
The tires will be shredded at a facility in Weston. The material is then placed in a monofill. Here the material awaits a potential future use as recycled material. The process removes the tires from back yards, streams, and empty lots, and stores them in a compact and more environmentally friendly space.