When Good Intentions are Ill-founded

In the 1970s, a Florida nonprofit created the Osborne Reef off Fort Lauderdale by dumping two million old tires in the expectation that they would create a reef in which marine life would thrive. The U.S. Army Corps approved the project. Goodyear, the company that supplied most of the tires, even dropped a gold-plated tire from its publicity airship to christen the reef.

It was an ill-conceived disaster. During the years that followed, many of the tires, shackled together, came loose during foul weather, endangering nearby reefs and as marine growth failed to take hold on the rubber tires.

Over the past two decades, public and private groups have launched programs to remove the remaining Osborne Reef tires from the ocean. It's slow-going. In 2022, the company 4ocean took the reins of the cleanup with half a million tires remaining.

It's taken years to undo what was initially undertaken in the name of ecology that became an environmental disaster. And it's happened elsewhere. Indonesia and Malaysia created tire-reef programs in the 1980s and are now seeing tire-littered beaches and coral reef destruction.

Jack Sobel, Ocean Conservancy's director of strategic conservation, said in a 2002 interview that "I don't know of any cases where there's been a success with tire reefs."

To support the efforts of 4ocean, visit www.4ocean.com