AbstractThe recycling of vulcanized rubber has received intensive attention from the scientific community for many years and yet the disposal of this type of waste remains a subject of major concern. In this study, vulcanized rubber foam waste from the shoe industry is thermo‐mechanically reclaimed through solid‐state shear extrusion (SSSE) with the use of an intermeshing co‐rotating twin‐screw extruder operated at three different temperatures (100 °C, 120 °C and 140 °C). The resulting microstructural, physical and thermal properties are investigated. In addition, compounds based on styrene‐butadiene rubber (SBR) filled with non‐reclaimed and reclaimed rubber foam wastes are compounded in a two‐roll mill and their vulcanization behavior is evaluated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and oscillating disc rheometry (ODR). The crosslinking density and tensile properties of vulcanized hot‐pressed molded compounds are also evaluated. The compounds filled with the reclaimed rubber foam wastes have higher values for the tensile strength and elongation at break compared with the compounds containing the non‐reclaimed waste. The E‐100 modulus remained the same for the different compositions and the best overall performance is achieved for the compound filled with the rubber foam waste reclaimed at 100 °C. This is attributed to the lower crosslink density, which improves the compound homogeneity, as well as the faster revulcanization kinetics of this compound.