Recycling of End-of-Life Tires (ELTs) for Sustainable Geotechnical Applications: A New Zealand Perspective

End-of-life tires (ELTs) are tires, unusable in their original form, which go into a waste management scheme (for recycling and energy recovery purposes), or otherwise disposed. In New Zealand, the annual disposal of 3.5 million ELTs is posing critical environmental socio-economic issues, reuse through large-volume engineering projects necessity. this study, gravel recycled granulated rubber were mixed to explore possibility obtaining synthetic granular geomaterials (with adequate geotechnical characteristics) that suitable as structural fills for applications including foundation systems low-rise light-weight residential buildings. Moreover, an framework with set geo-environmental criteria proposed acceptance gravel–rubber mixtures (GRMs) fills. It shown when gravel-size like particles used, GRMs volumetric content 40% less have strength (?’ > 30°), low compressibility (?v ? 3%), excellent adsorption properties, acceptable leachate metal concentration values (e.g., Zn < 1 mg/L), making them ideal fill materials many sustainable applications.