It sounded like a solution to two problems: rising energy costs and piles of old tires. A company in The Pas has just completed a pilot project that dealt with both issues.

Manitoba's tire-recycling program is slowly running out of money, and as a result, it has stopped picking up some larger tires. As a result, it's estimated thousands of tires are accumulating in landfills and yards across the province.

So a lot of people were interested when Tolko Industries in The Pas conducted a pilot project in September to experiment with burning old tires as fuel.

However, the experiment didn't turn out as well as hoped.

"When we went to try to burn it, the feed conveyer that we have is not very good, and then when it got into the boiler, the grates started to plug over and caused a lot of problems," says Blair Rydberg, manger at the mill.

Rydberg says making the boiler more tire-friendly would probably cost $3 million to $4 million.

"It probably wouldn't be worth burning tires by themselves," he says. "But if the boiler could be retrofitted with a self-cleaning grate, and we could burn more bark as well, it would probably have a good payback."

The mill has no plans to make the investment right now. However, Rydberg says the survival of his industry depends on cutting energy costs, noting the recent spike in the price of fuel resulted in some pulp and paper mills closing their doors.

Tolko is currently focusing on other methods to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels, such as using heat exchangers and recycling hot water. Rydberg says those changes will cut the mill's energy consumption by about a third, or about $3 million a year.

As for what will happen with all the tires stacking up around Manitoba, provincial officials continue to say what they've been saying for about a year: an announcement will be made soon.