Depending on the tire size, up to 15 PET bottles are used per tire. By replacing the material with recycled polyester fabric, Continental saves valuable resources. Continental presented its own ContiRe.Tex technology for the first time at the end of 2021. It is based on PET bottles that would otherwise not be recycled. These are spun into a polyester yarn without any intermediate chemical steps and can withstand the special stresses in a tire.
"Reduce, reuse, recycle – this trio is key to more sustainable tires. Wherever possible, we use recycled materials while maintaining our highest quality standards," says Jorge Almeida, Head of Sustainability at Continental Tires. "Our polyester yarn made from recycled PET bottles is just as strong as conventional polyester yarn. This shows that sustainability, performance, and safety go hand in hand at Continental.
The innovative ContiRe.Tex technology has been used on a small scale since 2022 at the tire plants in Lousado, Portugal, and Otrokovice, Czech Republic. The plants in Korbach, Germany, and Sarreguemines, France, have also recently started using recycled PET bottles in series production. The switch to more sustainable materials is an important part of the sustainability strategy of Continental Tires. The tire manufacturer has set itself the ambition of gradually increasing the proportion of renewable and recycled materials, in a first step to more than 40 percent until 2030. By then, all new car and light truck tires will contain only high-performance polyester fibers made from sustainable PET. A conventional passenger tire today contains about 15 to 20 percent recycled and renewable materials.
