UC Santa Barbara is well known for its thriving bike culture, and with the large number of bikes comes an even larger amount of tires. This motivated second-year environmental studies major Virginia Such and second-year psychological & brain sciences and environmental studies double major Sophia Long to address the pressing issue of how to go about recycling them. 

T.R.E.A.D. aims to cut the amount of tires that would otherwise end up in landfills. Courtesy of T.R.E.A.D.

More than 10,000 people bike to the University on a daily basis, according to UC Santa Barbara’s magazine. Their solution is the Tire Recovery Education and Diversion program (T.R.E.A.D.) — a tire-recycling initiative working in partnership with the Associated Students (A.S.) Bike Shop. The initiative aims to cut the amount of tires that would otherwise end up in landfills. 

Such and Long first formulated the idea for T.R.E.A.D. through UCSB’s Environmental Leadership Incubator (ELI). ELI is a program that supplies undergraduate students with project-development skills such as navigating project funding applications and conducting project impact analysis, enabling them to spearhead their own environmental stewardship efforts. 

Through ELI, the two students partnered with A.S. Assistant Director of Student Engagement and A.S. Bike Shop Manager Adam Jahnke as a “mentor” and point of contact.

Such initially applied to ELI with a proposal to repurpose used bike tires as flip-flops. After partnering with Long in fall of 2025 and realizing there weren’t any resources available for the project, they redirected their focus to a broader campus tire recycling program. 

“We interviewed a ton of people on campus management … we talked to A.S. Recycling, all these people to just kind of figure out what was going on with our bike tires in the shop,” Such said. “And then we started looking at local bike shops [like] Trek in Goleta, and we found out that they had a relationship with a recycling company called Liberty Tires.”

Liberty collects boxes of discarded tires from its clients, bringing them back to its facility in Los Angeles for shredding and processing. The company processes 30,000 tons of bike tires annually, producing over 4.7 billion pounds of reclaimed rubber. The final products are small rubber bits that can be used in construction projects such as playgrounds or tire-derived fuel, an energy-rich and more sustainable alternative to oil or coal. 

“We met with [Liberty’s] executive members and they were like, ‘Yeah, we onboard small mom-and-pop shops and big corporations all the time.’ They probably take a trip to the Ventura [and] Santa Barbara area once a day,” Long said. “So it was a lot simpler than we thought to just add them on as a stop and then be able to bring our tires.” 

In January, Long and Such were awarded a grant for T.R.E.A.D. to cover Liberty’s pickup service fee of $25 per box. However, they anticipate that more funding will be needed to sustain the program in the long run. 

T.R.E.A.D. coordinated its first pickup with Liberty during spring break, and future pickups will be arranged as needed. Such and Long are scheduled to showcase their project in a capstone presentation at Bren Hall during Week 9 of spring quarter. Looking forward, the two hope to expand the program to other campuses in the University of California system.

“UCSB has such a community that cares so much about sustainability, so it’s kind of shocking that there [was] nothing going on in the bike shop,” Such said. “Anything we can do to help UCSB stay a beautiful campus and promote sustainability is amazing.”

A version of this article appeared on p.6 of the April 23 print edition of the Daily Nexus.