How has the story of cultivating oysters in tires become a disaster?

From a method that is considered "above all", culturing oysters in tires has become an environmental disaster.

Recently, it has been reported that culturing oysters in tires is a very dangerous process for the environment as well as human health. However, there are also opinions that the form of oyster farming in tires has been applied for a long time, and absolutely no harm.

Picture 1 of How has the story of cultivating oysters in tires become a disaster?
Raw oysters with lemon and mustard are popular dishes.

So what is going on? Is the method of culturing oysters in tires bad? Try to find out.

From a breakthrough method in the 20th century .

In the early years of the 20th century, the worldwide tire industry exploded with the advent of cars and consequently, the number of waste tires increased dramatically.

Of course, handling these tires is a real headache. To make burning fuel is not as effective as coal, causing environmental pollution. For recycling, it is also not effective, but in order not to be decomposed, it must be thousands of years.

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Michellin - one of the leading tire manufacturers in the world.

Eventually, by 1960, governments and fishermen came up with a method that was considered "excellent" to handle the amount of waste tires: drop into the sea to feed oysters.

Oysters are shellfish, often clinging to " substrates " - also known as beds - such as reefs, rocks, bottom of ships . Therefore, the method of oyster farming is to give them a lip same school, wait until the oyster is big enough and harvest.

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The method of tire oyster farming helps to solve a large amount of rubber tires at that time.

With the above-mentioned "excellent" method, it can be said that people have expected to achieve "dual benefit benefits" : to help the fisheries industry develop to a new height, to remove millions of millions of high tires. Waste rubbish is back up at that time.

. become an ineffective and environmentally damaging method

But after decades, countries leading the way in releasing tires into the sea to cultivate oysters gradually realized the limitations of this method.

First, in some books on tire recycling, tires can be used to make oysters, but also warn against using small and shallow waters because they can cause water pollution.

This is true, since tires are covered by hydrocarbons , over time they will degrade and release heavy metals such as copper and zinc.

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The number of oysters and fish approaching the tires is not as expected.

However, recent studies show that this decomposition process is much faster than we previously imagined. This makes national governments concerned about the possibility of environmental pollution, the toxicity that old tires cause for marine life that people will consume.

But not all. When we think of this method, we believe that tires will act as artificial reefs, becoming habitats for fish and shellfish.

However, according to statistics from environmental organizations in the US, the number of oysters and fish approaching the tires is not as expected. The reason is that because the tires are blown by the ocean and the storms of the ocean become discrete, they cannot create habitats for aquatic life.

Compared to other artificial farming methods, tires produce up to 40% less efficiency. At the same time, this process also inadvertently destroyed the coral reefs available in nature.

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Compared to other artificial reefs, tires are much less efficient.

Therefore, in recent years, governments have been implementing a campaign to salvage old tires that have been in the seabed for decades, such as Osborne Reef, Florida (USA). with over 700,000 tires dropped from 1972.

And this is just one of more than 1,000 coral reefs with tires all over the US coast.

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Governments began to implement a campaign to salvage waste tires.

The French government is also beginning to implement this campaign, with more than 25,000 tires being recalled on the Mediterranean Sea.