Around the world, discarded tires tread again
http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20140802-discarded-tires-tread-again://
from Kenya to India to Detroit to Sweden, clever and eco-minded niche entrepreneurs are turning one of industrialized society’s most ubiquitous and difficult-to-dispose-of waste products (an estimated 1.5 billion tires are discarded each year worldwide) into weirdly appealing – and super-tough – items with a little bit of, um, soul.
Enterprising locals in Kenya have made a cottage industry out of hand-crafting so-called akala sandals from the “pelts” of old car tires. They sell on the streets of Nairobi for anywhere from $2 to $5 a pair – considerably less than retail footwear sold nearby, and boasting 10 times the longevity.
In fact, Maasai tribesmen, who roam southern Kenya and northern Tanzania, have commonly worn these durable sandals – also known as “thousand-milers” – for decades to walk through brush tougher than rhino hide. And the footwear is trending mainstream as you read this, at e-tailers like Maasai Treads and Akala Sandals and soleRebels, whose $80 "tooTOOs" womens shoes, which feature outsoles made of hand-cut discarded tire treads, are pictured above.
Then there is Detroit Threads, where the Reverend Faith Fowler ripped a page from the thousand-miler pagebook. At Cass Community Social Services in Detroit, she employs dozens of workers who turn old tires – the group’s Green Industries division collects about 35,000 discards a year – into $25 flip-flops with some serious tread life. Aimed at urban hipsters who are tired of the same old look, the sandals are designed by students at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
http://www.web2carz.com/lifestyle/shopping/2546/10-cool-ways-to-recycle-car-parts
= new reply since forum marked as read
And became a great admirer of the Maasai, bought back some of their art. Thanks for sharing this! 
about the sandals years ago, have wondered if they were still being made/used. Glad to know other uses are being devised. I heard, quite a while back, about a guy making a house with tires fill with sand, wonder if that is still a workable thing. I would be concerned about the actual content of the materials tires are made of and continued close proximity to that stuff. But something has to be done with them.
... The Mother of invention, art and ingenuity. When my son was little, he loved baseball and baseball cards. I couldn't afford to buy baseball cards every time we went to the store, so he started making his own. He drew the player on the front in an "action" shot complete with the players name, and then put his team and stats on the back. His favorite team was the Reds. 
They also used to call the Peace Sign (☮
"Tracks of the American Chicken".
People tend to forget how bad it was back then. A generation of WWII vets were told to see their own kids as the enemy. Divorce became common. There was the generation gap and the sexual revolution and women's rights and civil rights and people my age not knowing if we were going to be alive when we were 30 because of nuclear proliferation in a world run by authoritarian robots with buzz cuts.
In the midst of all of that, long hair and tie dye and the leather sandals made from old tires were almost like a uniform of the resistance against the establishment which called us all a bunch of commies. We STILL want to see World Peace. They believe that's only possible after they wipe out all resistance (including us) and dominate the planet.
BTW: The myth of the "dirty hippie" still lingers. Actually, the hippies practically invented the idea of guys using shampoo in an age of Vitalis and Brill Cream and carefully parting the slickened hair. Hell, the prior generation still talked about bathing only once a week on Saturday night for church in the morning. Hippies got the "dirty" reputation from the Right who wanted to scare their own clean cut kids away from the movement by claiming those "cool looking" girls and guys didn't believe in soap.
rough times -- when the culture wars began.
