Reclaimed Rubber Industry Accelerates High-Quality Development, Circular Economy Empowers Green Transformation of the Rubber Industry

As a core product of rubber resource recycling, the reclaimed rubber industry is embracing a development opportunity driven by both policy incentives and technological advancements. As the world's largest producer and consumer of reclaimed rubber, China released the Promotion Plan for the Application of Recycled Materials in February 2026, which clarifies at the institutional level that reclaimed rubber is a key strategic resource supporting the sustainable development of the rubber industry. Through the resource utilization of waste rubber, the industry not only addresses the industrial chain security dilemma of China's over 80% external dependence on natural rubber, but also systematically solves the governance challenge of "black pollution" from waste rubber, becoming a core pillar for the green transformation of China's rubber industry and the delivery of its dual carbon goals.

1. Reclaimed Rubber: The Core Carrier for Resource Utilization of Waste Rubber

Reclaimed rubber is a rubber material produced from waste rubber products (such as tires, hoses, and conveyor belts) and offcuts from rubber product manufacturing. Through a series of physical and chemical processing, it is converted from an elastic state to a plastic, viscous form that can be re-vulcanized, serving as the core medium for rubber resource recycling and reuse.

Its industrial application delivers three core values: environmentally, it effectively mitigates the "black pollution" from waste rubber and reduces related environmental and fire safety hazards; economically, it can replace a portion of natural and synthetic rubber to stabilize enterprises' production costs; in terms of resource security, it cuts reliance on petroleum (the core feedstock for synthetic rubber) and natural rubber planting, enhancing the independent and controllable capacity of the rubber industrial chain.

2. Core Technologies for Reclaimed Rubber: Green Upgrading Becomes the Mainstream Industry Trend

The production core of reclaimed rubber is to break the three-dimensional vulcanized cross-linked structure of waste rubber to restore the material's plasticity. The full production process is divided into three core sections: pretreatment, core regeneration, and refining.

In the reclaimed rubber pretreatment section, standardized, clean raw materials for subsequent production are provided through sorting and cleaning, crushing and grinding, and impurity removal via magnetic separation and air separation. The core regeneration section is the key track for technological upgrading, with three mainstream processes currently in use: the traditional dynamic desulfurization tank process with mature technology, the eco-friendly atmospheric pressure continuous regeneration process widely promoted across the industry, and the low-temperature regeneration process (with low pollution and high efficiency) that represents the future development direction. In the refining section, standardized finished products are formed through kneading, filtering, and refining sheeting. The 2026 promotion plan explicitly states that normal temperature and pressure green regeneration technology will be fully rolled out to accelerate the replacement of traditional high-pollution processes.

3. Expanding Market Landscape and Application Scenarios of Reclaimed Rubber

Reclaimed rubber has formed a mature circular economy industrial system, with China's output accounting for more than 70% of the global total. With the continuous tightening of environmental regulations, the industry's concentration has been steadily improving.

The application of reclaimed rubber has achieved full coverage across multiple fields: the tire industry is the largest application segment, accounting for 35% of total consumption; the hose and conveyor belt sector accounts for 25%; various rubber product fields including shoe soles, sealing rings, and shock-absorbing pads account for 30%; and the remaining 10% comes from other sectors such as asphalt modification and waterproof materials. The latest promotion plan clearly identifies tire manufacturing, road engineering, construction and building materials, and industrial rubber products as the four key promotion areas, encouraging tire enterprises to reasonably increase the blending ratio of reclaimed rubber, pyrolysis carbon black and other recycled materials on the premise of meeting safety standards, and driving the upgrading of reclaimed rubber from low-end filling to high-end substitution, and from local pilot projects to full-domain promotion.

4. Improving Standard System and Policy Support for Reclaimed Rubber

A standardized grading system has been established for the reclaimed rubber industry. The current national standard GB/T 13460-2016 Reclaimed Rubber divides products into three categories by raw material: reclaimed rubber from tire tread rubber, reclaimed rubber from whole tires, and reclaimed rubber from other rubber products. It also grades products by performance, and clarifies core assessment indicators covering two dimensions: chemical composition (including moisture content, ash content, acetone extract) and physical properties (including Mooney viscosity, tensile strength, and elongation at break), providing a standardized selection basis for downstream applications.

The 2026 Promotion Plan for the Application of Recycled Materials breaks the traditional perception of reclaimed rubber as a "downgraded substitute" at the institutional level, builds a closed-loop industrial system covering recycling, pretreatment, production, application and full-chain traceability, and provides all-round support for industrial development through a policy mix including tax incentives, green procurement preferences, and financial service empowerment. Qi Xuezhi, Secretary-General of the Rubber Resource Recycling Branch of the China Rubber Industry Association (CRIA), noted that promoting the application of recycled materials is a critical measure to enhance the independent and controllable capacity of China's rubber industrial chain and safeguard the security of national strategic resources.

5. Development Challenges and Future Upgrading Trends of the Reclaimed Rubber Industry

At present, the reclaimed rubber industry still faces three core challenges: the environmental governance of traditional processes needs further deepening, raw material and environmental compliance costs continue to rise, and there remains a gap between the mechanical and aging resistance of reclaimed rubber products and those of virgin rubber.

In the future, the reclaimed rubber industry will transform and upgrade along four core directions: first, technology greening, with clean production technology becoming the absolute mainstream of the industry; second, product high-endization, developing special reclaimed rubber to increase product added value; third, industrial intellectualization, improving production automation and product quality stability through digital technology; fourth, application refinement, rolling out customized production to expand high-value application scenarios.

The reclaimed rubber industry is a critical component of the circular economy, and the core carrier for converting the "black pollution" of waste rubber into "black gold". With continuous technological innovation and the steady improvement of the policy system, China's reclaimed rubber industry will accelerate its green and high-quality transformation, which not only provides a solid guarantee for the security of the domestic rubber industrial chain and supply chain, but also contributes China's solutions to the development of the circular economy in the global rubber industry.