Repaving with recycled plastic
Plastic bottles by the side of a road area common sight, an unseemly reminder of how often consumer products are discarded carelessly.
Now some of those bottles may become part of the road.
A California company has devised a process that integrates recycled plastic into road repaving, an innovation that could revolutionize the industry while yielding environmental benefits.
Sean Weaver, president of TechniSoil Industrial in the northern California city of Redding, says the polymerinfused roads churned out by the company's pavement process are sturdier, flatter, safer and more durable than t hose made with regular asphalt.
More appealing to environmentalists, they incorporate 100% of the old asphalt – sparing the air from dozens of trips by trucks hauling away and bringing in building material – and provide a new market for plastic products that could otherwise wind up in a landfill.
“Everybody that's looked at it said this will be one of the most trans format ive road-construction technologies ever ,” Weaver said. “We' re recycling what's there, and we're delivering a road that's better than the original, at no higher cost than it would cost you to rehab that road the traditional way.”
The process involves four large construction vehicles linked together in what's called a “recycling train ,” which scoops up the top 3 inches of asphalt on a lane, grinds them on a mill and mixes them with Tech ni Soil' s G 5 binder, containing from 2%-20% of liquefied plastic. The blended product is deposited back on the road, paved and rolled over.
There's no heat involved in the operation, which essentially replaces the traditional binder – bitumen, a leftover from refining oil – with a sturdier plastic composite. The other elements of asphalt, such as crushed rock, gravel, sand and filler, remain in place.
Weaver said his company is the only one that recycles the entirety of the asphalt – typically only up to half is re used–which makes the new technique cost-effective.
Last week, the California Department of Transportation replaced three lane sofa 1,000foot highway segment in the Butte County town of Oroville with the TechniSoil approach, the first time Caltrans had paved a road using all recycled materials.
Caltrans told USA TODAY via email that it is considering other similar pilot projects.
“Plastic recycling has a potential to not only repurpose a material with high availability, but also reduce our dependence on oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions while creating more durable and resilient roadways,” the agency said.
The city of Los Angeles, which paved about 2,300 miles of roads last year – that's the flight distance from L.A. to Washington, D.C. – is also eager to implement the new technology.
Adel Hagekhalil, executive director of the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services – better known as StreetsLA – said the city conducted extensive lab tests of the TechniSoil product and came away impressed, calling it a potential “game-changer.”