Peter Singleton creates The Manbang to hold down silage wrap

Peter Singleton said his extensive experience in the agriculture industry and desire to be environmentally conscious led him to developing The Manbag, made from the rings of tread off disused vehicle tyres.

The Traralgon, Vic, entrepreneur hopes the 20-kilogram design will replace sandbags, which have a limited lifespan, and re-purpose tyres previously destined for landfill.

"We Aussies will definitely show the rest of the world the most efficient way to hold a silage covering down securely," Mr Singleton said.

The Manbags are in use on five farms in Victoria, including two dairy farms in Gippsland, and properties at Cobram, Vic, Pyramid Hill, Vic, and Boorcan, Vic.

Mr Singleton said he used tyre cutters to separate the tread from the sidewall of the tyre, and then pressed two treads together to make The Mandbag.

A sidewall from a tyre is added to the two treads to create a handle, allowing farmers to easily place the rubber weights around the edges of the silage wrap to prevent the covers from blowing off.

Mr Singleton said the design had a minimum lifespan of 10 years, while the left over sidewalls were stitched together in groups of three and used as a cover across the silage wrap.

"We will stop the breeding of dengue and mosquitoes in the whole tyres and we can improve the OH&S standards around a silage stack," he said.

The rubber weights were created as a result of a project Mr Singleton undertook on Google Maps, where he spent more than a hundred hours searching aerial imaging to determine how many silage locations were on Australian farms.

Since starting the project, he has located 740 properties across Australia and said each of those locations had between one to eight silage stacks.

"I'd estimate that the average stack would have 8000 tyres, and a lot of farmers will hesitate to say there is no way to say they would have 8000 tyres, but that's just for the smaller guys," he said.

"The bigger players in the industry have 50,000/60,000 tyres."

Mr Singleton worked as a fencing contractor for The Midfield Group for close to two decades, and estimated large companies like Midfields would have close to 100,000 tyres across their properties.

He said joining three tyre sidewalls together covered an area of 1.2 square metres and was an efficient silage weight system.

Westbury, Vic, dairy farmer Stuart Griffin said he bought about 250 Manbags to hold his silage tarps in place.

"We thought they would be a great option to pin our tarps around the edges as opposed to full tyres," he said.

"We love them because they don't fill with water and the store away much easier than tyres because they're flat and have handles

"Tyres will do the job, but I just think these Manbags will do it better and easier."

Mr Griffin said he owned a few thousand tyres, in line with the EPA guidelines, and said the Manbags made covering silage an easier job.

"They are relatively heavy, but they need to be because you need to hold the tarp down," he said.

"No one likes covering silage twice, it's hard enough the first time, but if you let air into your stack, it can lessen the quality of your silage and cause you a headache."

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