From the road to your living room

From the road to your living room
By Doloresz Katanich with Reuters and AP
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Ingenious designers are giving new life to tyres.

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A former architect from Cairo and an upcoming entrepreneur in Ghana have the same goal; they want to help the environment and create something unique at the same time. They both transform old tyres into colourful beds, sofas and other furniture adding their own design to the upcycled item.

In Africa, waste management is a serious problem. According to Salah El-Haggar, Professor of energy and sustainable development at the American University in Cairo's school of engineering, Egypt only produces nearly 140 million tonnes of solid waste a year, but only half of this gets recycled.

"We have a big number of tyres that are not used although they have a high economic value. The number of cars is increasing in Egypt, and hence the number of tires", said the professor, adding that "there are lots of technologies that we can apply to use these tyres. One of these technologies is already available in Egypt whereby we reprocess these tyres and turn them into floor mats for automobiles and factories."

Tyres can also be used as fuel for cement factories, where they are being burnt at 1400 degrees Celsius in an isolated environment. "However, burning tyres in the air pollutes the environment", said El-Haggar.

Click on the video above to see what the two entrepreneurs create out of disposed tyres.

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