By April Amadon
A city business has joined with a California company to produce what they hope are safer and more environmentally sound sidewalks.
Deborah Robbins, vice president of RubberForm Recycled Products, shook hands with Lindsay Smith, president and CEO of California-based Rubbersidewalks Inc., on Friday, symbolizing the new partnership between the two companies.
Using recycled rubber products, Rubbersidewalks Inc., makes interlocking rubber sidewalk panels.
RubberForm Recycled Products, 75 Michigan St., will begin producing the rubber panels March 1, taking over the manufacturing for all of Rubbersidewalks’ clients on the east coast and in the midwest.
Rubbersidewalks has installations in more than 60 cities across the country.
“We have many, many customers on the east coast, and we want to serve them on the east coast,” Smith said.
RubberForm currently has six employees. Robbins said as production increases in the spring, the company will hire three to five more, and perhaps five more next year.
Dan Joyce, vice president of Rubbersidewalks Inc., said the partnership will save his company about $2 per square foot on shipping.
“It’s basically allowing us to transfer that cost savings to the city and allowing the city to really get the product in and solving their urban sidewalk problems,” Joyce said.
The sidewalks are made of crumb rubber, from shredded vehicle tires, which Smith said is superior to concrete because it’s more resilient. Rubber can withstand the strains of both tree roots and inclement weather.
Working with recycled material is a badge of pride for both Robbins and Smith.
“We will be helping divert the 28 million waste tires that are generated in the state of New York every year, which is one of our important mandates,” Smith said.
Robbins said the rubber sidewalks fit in with RubberForm’s commitment to “green” manufacturing.
Each square foot of sidewalk weighs 12 pounds and contains enough crumb rubber to make one tire. The sidewalks are hard but will be safer for pedestrians, according to Smith.
“A bottle will not break on it,” she said. “It’s firm as a walking surface, even though it has that rubber.”
RubberForm brings crumb rubber in from High Tread International on Ohio Street. The company has been making wheelstops and other road/parking lot items since starting up its presses last fall.
Rubbersidewalk’s first cold-weather city was New Rochelle in Westchester County, where the sidewalks performed well, Smith said.
“The ground freezes and expands, and what it does to concrete, it breaks it. We’ve gone through three cycles in New Rochelle of very serious winters, very serious freeze-thaw situations, snowplows, salting,” she said. “Rubber sidewalks, unlike the rest of the street, have maintained their beauty and their excellence. We feel confident about putting the product everywhere in cold temperature climates.”
Rubber sidewalks have also been installed in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. The company saw 400 percent growth last year and Joyce said it believes rubber sidewalks are the wave of the future in urban planning.
“It’s now becoming a known entity with a lot of the exposure coming in. And cities talk to cities, so as more cities put it in, more people hear about it.”
The cost of putting in rubber sidewalks is about 20 percent higher than the cost of concrete installation, but Smith said it’s cheaper in the long run.
“Concrete is seen as a very cheap material,” she said. “(But) it is not inexpensive to put in a material that is going to fail in three to five years, which is what happens with concrete.”
