Minding Your Business
Rubber Baron
Robert Ingram, owner of Ingram Auto Mall in Norfolk, used to pay $3,000 a month to dispose of old tires. He balked at the $1-per-tire the city charged to take them away, and at the fact that they would just take up landfill space.

So Ingram, a savvy and environmentally concerned businessman, decided to make his mountain of tires — which at one point totaled 150,000 — into a molehill.

His motivation was more than monetary. "We were under court order to do so," he says.

Last year, while looking through a recycling magazine, Ingram read about a Florida businessman who had developed a use for discarded tires. Eco-Blocks are made of compressed tires and surrounded by concrete. They can be used as construction material or as a bulkhead.

"The tires inside the block are so dense," Ingram says, "[they’re] the best soundproofing products on the planet."

Ingram’s Eco-Blocks come in various sizes, but the standard is a 4-by-8-foot block comprised of 140 tires. The outside of the blocks can be made to look like brick or stone.

"They’re 50 percent stronger than solid concrete," Ingram says, "and only a little more than half as heavy." They’re also cheaper to purchase and cheaper to transport. And rather than take up space in a landfill for the next million years or so, the tires are being put to good use.

It appears to be a winning venture: Ingram is profiting rather than paying to remove his old tires. Last year he started a second company, Ingram’s Eco-Blocks of Virginia, which owns the eastern Virginia rights to the Eco-Block process.

"We’re really excited about this product," Ingram says. "This seemed really right."

— Leila Ugincius