During a road trip from San Francisco to Southern California, I observed the many facets of the landscape: beautiful rolling valleys, pervasive big box stores, and stockpiles of vehicle tires piled high and awaiting their uncertain future. Sound familiar? Unfortunately, this is prevalent throughout the United States scenery.
California has been actively finding ways to reduce those stockpiles, promoting the expansion of the used tires market and consequently spurring research, business development, and new inventions. As a recipient of a CalRecycle grant program, Swisstrax Corporation has found a way to utilize recycled rubber particles from tires in its newly developed line of 100% recycled, modular flooring tiles.
The What: Swisstrax Corporation is a manufacturer and distributor of Swisstrax and Ecotrax products–interlocking, modular floor tiles that are Swiss engineered and made in Riverside County, California. They come in 2 sizes (13” x 13” x ½” and 15.75” x 15.75” x ¾”), 15 colors, and patterns ranging from diamond to solid flat to open lattice. The non-slip, high-compressive, impact-resistant modular tiles can withstand a roll-over weight up to 50,000 pounds and resist a temperature range from -28° F to 248° F.
As an alternative to standard flooring such as paint/epoxy coatings and throwaway floor coverings, the tiles can be easily installed and maintained, thus making them suitable for small and large scaled commercial, industrial, and residential projects. Typical applications include workshops, storage, garages, airplane hangars, showrooms, gyms, trade show exhibitions, dance floors, decks, and balconies. Most notably, they can be reused again and again because the snap on design allows one to easily dismantle them and bring them to another site or building.
The Swisstrax product line is typically made from polypropylene and has a 12 year warranty. The Ecotrax product line is made from 100% recycled material, either plastic or rubber, and has a 7 year warranty.
The first type of Ecotrax tile uses refined plastic pellets processed from recycled shredded plastics which may come from items such as conventional durable goods, truck liners, and plastic tiles from Ecotrax’ competitors as well as their own product lines. The color selection is limited to the grey range because most recycled plastic pellets come from dark plastics. To minimize its manufacturing carbon footprint, Swisstrax Corporation consciously chose to work only with plastic pellet suppliers who are located within a 20 mile radius of its manufacturing plant. It recently implemented an innovative recycling program to close the loop on its manufacturing process: Swisstrax will buy back previously used Swisstrax products or give a client credit towards future purchases so that it can recycle its old products into its new products.
The second type of Ecotrax tile uses a Polydyne™ engineered rubber powder processed from recycled rubber tires. With the help of CalRecycle grant funding from the State of California, Swisstrax spent 18 months on research and development of incorporating recycled rubber into its products before reaching production stage. The grantor has helped the company connect with recyclers, suppliers, and landfills, and is working with Swisstrax to develop a goal of how much rubber tire stockpile it can help reduce. While Ecotrax’ recycled rubber has a larger shrink rate when compared to plastic, its total added value to the product outweighs its downside: it not only has a high non-slip rating, but also gives new life to recycled materials and helps divert valuable recyclable materials–rubber tires– from landfills.
The Who: California-born Randy Nelson is the Founder and President of Swisstrax Corporation which is based in Indio, California. Bored of flipping burgers after high school graduation, Randy moved to Switzerland at age 19 to work for a Swiss construction product company and learn about sales and product development. During his stay in Europe, he helped the company form partnerships to develop the industry, expand globally to 26 countries, and manage the company’s plastics division among many other duties.
Twenty years later, upon his return to California with his wife and 3 children, he found in his shipped container of belongings a batch of plastic modular flooring tiles given by his former colleagues. What he ran as a trial flooring project at home caught the interest of his friends and blossomed into his current business today. Randy initially bought the flooring tiles from Switzerland to sell in the U.S., but after positive feedback during a 2004 trade show, he decided to import the Swiss technology and produce the floor tiles himself in California.
A few years ago, Randy came across an article featuring products made from recycled rubber tires and the California CalRecycle grant program. Thus began his idea for exploring ways to include rubber pellets in his flooring tiles and consequently resulted in a new line of green products made of 100% recycled ingredients. Right now, Ecotrax products make up 5-10% of his overall product line. Randy’s goal is to expand it to 30% and research further development methods with recycled materials.
Per Swisstrax’ Randy Nelson: “recycling to the Swiss is a way of life. We do it because we believe in it and it is the right thing to do. It makes complete sense and comes with long term benefits. There are no home runs but small steps towards a better future. As our natural resources are depleted, we need to find alternatives and we cannot always rely on Mother Nature to do the work. If we had not more trees to cut and use for paper, how valuable would that newspaper be? How likely would it be that we recycle it? The same goes for our products. If we start now we can build towards a better future. I compare the environment to what a doctor said to me once: your body will take care of you the first 40 years and you need to take care of your body the next 40 years. From what we are learning about the effects of global warming, we are in the phase where we need to start taking better care of our planet.”
If there are more of us who creatively think and invent like Randy, then perhaps the collective efforts will help everyone step up ownership in the need to conserve our natural resources.
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