“My Life As A Tire”

Educational Video Production

Background Information

Jule Asterisk, Project Manager

The writer/director of “My Life as a Tire” is a trained actor, dancer and choreographer, having performed with the Alberta Ballet Company around Alberta as well as modern dance and theatre companies in Toronto, Montreal, Europe, New York, Mexico, Japan and China.  She holds a Landfill Operator Certificate and Compost Facility Operator Certificate, issued by Alberta Environment and has been working in the Waste Management sector for close to 10 years.

Growing up on several continents has lead Jule to ask the question “Where are we going?”  A Director of the Regional Environmental Action Committee, Jule holds great regard and concern for our environment.  She plays herself in the educational video, “My Life as a Tire”.

While managing mountains of waste as a Landfill Manager, Jule Asterisk wrote and directed this video to provide youth with motivation for waste reduction.  She worked with Toyo Tire, Dofasco Steel, Columbia Chemicals, the National Film Board of Malaysia and Canetic Energy Services to obtain footage of how resources are extracted and produced into tires, with the Alberta Legislative Library and Alberta Recycling Management Authority to determine the history of tire recycling in Alberta and with Rubber Tech International to document post-consumer recycled tire products.  With cinematography by Richard Gustavsen, soundtrack by Chris Wynters (Captain Tractor), animation by Ethereal 3D and an introduction by Premier Ralph Klein, this video speaks to the international aspect of a product that is better off recycled than wasted.  

Synopsis

The four Tire Brothers; Rubber, Steel, Carbon Black and Oil, are rolling along the highway, singing about how tires came to be.  We see flashbacks of the extraction of natural resources for making tires; a rubber tree being tapped, a drilling rig in winter, the production of steel and the plant for making carbon black.  

Inside the van, a Family is trying to keep their kids amused when they stop at a rest area.  The camera follows a passing truck and we are introduced to Bernie, a grumpy person traveling with her burn barrel. At a railroad crossing, the barrel bounces onto the road, spilling nails.  Bernie puts the barrel back into her truck without cleaning up the area.  The Family drives over Bernie’s debris, causing punctures in all four tires.  Mom calls tow truck to nearest mechanic shop and the Four Tire Brothers are removed and placed on a heap of scrap tires. 

When another character in the tire heap relates the history of the Tire Recycling Management Association, we see scenes of its early formation.  In Spring the tire pile is moved to the local Waste Transfer Site.  A Municipal Director of Field Operations calls for a truck and the much larger tire pile at the transfer site is taken to the Regional Landfill.  The Regional Landfill Manager is livid at the messy load of dumped tires and calls Alberta Job Corps to sort them out.  After the tires are stacked, they are picked up for recycling; taken to Legal shredded and recycled into various items.  We see a cow mattress, placement of bricks for a library walkway, rubberized roofing shingles, mats in use for haki sak and skateboarding, a pour-in-place playground and the placement of a rubberized asphalt roadway.

Funding Bodies

A very special ‘Thank You’ to our in-kind contributors