Let's ROAD TEST your knowledge about tires.

Can you guess how many tires are thrown out each year?

What uses can you think of for an old tire?

Not sure? Don't worry.

This story will help you find the answers.

More than 265 million tires are thrown out each year. That's a lot of rubber. Some of the tires are recycled, but most of them are discarded. This is not very good for the environment.

Recycling would be the ideal solution, and Agricultural Research Service scientists have found a way to do it. They take the rubber and polyester/nylon mixture from the tires and divide it into two separate materials. The polyester/nylon fiber is called fluff, and the rubber material is called crumb. Yes, that's fluff and crumb—sounds like a dessert, doesn't it?

Companies usually cut the tires into smaller pieces. The rubber and polyester/nylon fiber are then mashed with a freezing treatment and a hammermill, or by grinding up the material into smaller pieces.

Companies save more than half of the rubber from this process, but the rest is still sent to landfills. The rubber that is recovered is worth about $500 per ton.

Agricultural Engineer W. Stanley Anthony, head of ARS' Cotton Ginning Research Unit in Stoneville, Mississippi, developed the new, improved process based on cotton ginning technology. His methods allow companies to recover the remaining crumb that was on its way to landfills and to also recover the fiber. So, say a company sends 12 tons of tires a day (that's about 1,200 tires) to a landfill. If it recycles those tires using Anthony's technique, it could potentially turn that into an additional $5,700 a day.

Many things can be made with old tires. Things such as new tires, truck bed liners, running tracks (like the one at the White House), shoes (like your favorite sneakers), carpet backing, automobile brake pads and shoes, asphalt, water hoses and floor mats can be made from the recycled rubber.