This study investigates the interface shear characteristics of tire added to sand using large scale direct shear test for backfill application in reinforced soil structures. Tire granules are added at a gravimetric proportion of 30% in the composite mixture along with sand reinforced with woven geotextile and geogrids. The efficiency of the reinforced mix over the unreinforced mix is represented as interaction coefficient. Geogrids of two different aperture sizes are used in the experimental studies to understand the effect of aperture size on the shear strength of the composite mixture. Also, geotextile was also included to find the possibility of using it as soil reinforcement in this composite mixture. The woven geotextiles exhibited interaction coefficient in sand is in the range of 0.77–0.85. In the case of interaction of composite mixture with woven geotextile, interaction coefficient is in the range of 0.86–0.9. The effect of aperture size of geogrid is studied in the tire added sand, and this behaviour is compared with that of pure sand. Adding tire granules to sand has improved the interaction coefficient from 0.89–0.98 for geogrids of bigger aperture size. However, the geogrid of smaller aperture size has shown negligible increase in the interaction coefficients. These results show that the geosynthetics can be effectively used to prevent the excessive compressibility of rubber sand mixture and these inclusions can also be considered as reinforcement by improving the shear strength of the composite mixture.