On Recycling
Not so long ago, somebody looked at the heaps of tennis shoes and car tires piling up in landfills and thought “we can grind these up and sell the pieces!” Since then, these useful scrap rubber bits have been employed in a variety of ways, including replacement for gravel on playgrounds.
The material is, in many ways, an improvement over gravel: softer when trod upon, a nice radiator of heat on those chilly Minnesota spring days, and a good use of material that would go to waste. Unfortunate side effect: warm rubber has a biting, putrid scent. You can’t smell the fresh cut grass or the summer breeze; it smells like you are inside the world’s biggest tire.
Comments
Dan McKeown
I remember when the stuff was first used at Royal Oaks Elementary in Woodbury (my alma mater). A new playground had been built to replace the old one made almost entirely of large pieces of timber bolted together. The old structure looked an awful lot like the obstacle course in Full Metal Jacket…
Anyhow, the new playground was very modern and included small “landing pads” at the bottom of the slides and swings made of old rubber. They were pink and a lot of fun to jump on as they were kind of like mini trampolines. The novelty of these pads quickly wore off, however, and the boys went back to playing wall ball and “smear” in the parking lot. Most of the girls played tether ball until this one girl straddled the ball and started eating glue.