Roads Can Be Recycled Forever, Why Don't More Cities Do It? | World Wide Waste | Business Insider

asphalt pavement might be the world's most recycled material my gut feeling is that asphalt can be recycled indefinitely but most recycling plants mix just a small amount of old product into mostly new pavement that means we have to keep mining rocks and drilling oil just to keep roads in shape one company says it's found a way to make 100 percent recycled asphalt you ask any old time asphalt guy and they give you a dirty look and laugh and say it's impossible it doesn't work [Music] for years green asphalt fought to prove its product is durable enough for New York City recycled asphalt usually costs less than the brand new stuff but if it's that simple why isn't everyone rolling out roads made from worldwide waste asphalt has two main ingredients crushed rocks and a sticky mixture that holds them together that goop is mostly bitumen a fossil fuel originally found in Tar Pits people have been using this stuff for thousands of years to waterproof containers build stone walls and seal boats its first use on a road was likely in Babylon more than 2500 years ago asphalt roads came to the US in the late 1800s and within a few decades demand grew so much that natural sources couldn't keep up so it became more common to make this human using crude oil as oil prices Rose in the 1970s more people started reusing old pavement to cut costs but Regulators often limit how much old material can go into new mixes usually around 30 percent because of concerns that adding more would make roads weaker that creates leftovers that can pile up if New York is going to Mill up one million tons of asphalt and only is allowed to replace it with 30 recycled what are you going to do with those 700 000 extra tons it has to go somewhere 100 recycled asphalt could make use of all of it and eliminate the need for Rock's mined from quarries the carbon footprint savings is the fact that we don't have to truck Stone and oil from all over upstate New York in a place like New York City which is almost always tearing up its roads to access utility lines underneath asphalt recycling is a perfect match you'll pave a brand new road and then continent will come and dig a trench through it and you know it's nothing stays down for 10 years anyway to strip old asphalt off the road workers use either a specialized machine that cuts and grinds up the pavement or less precise methods these old pavement pieces are called millings and cities have to figure out what to do with all of them to recycle it saves a tremendous amount of money you're not trucking it Upstate you're not trucking it to landfills their next stop is this plant on a typical day green asphalt receives up to 50 dump trucks worth of product most of them will get right back in line and leave the plant filled with fresh recycled asphalt thank you but the first step is crushing up the millings machine on top of the pile is our excavator that's where we process the material it picks out any metals garbage debris leaves the stuff that you see laying all over the New York city streets does not make good asphalt if any plastic or Road striping or fabric from the road base gets in it that gets picked out by hand and conveyor belt carries the pieces through screens that sort them into three sizes black sand small rocks and bigger ones they'll be mixed back together in different combinations depending on whether the asphalt will be used for potholes private roads or highways then it's time to turn up the heat this flaming drum warms and mixes the asphalt at the same time after it's reached a temperature of 300 degrees it's properly mixed it comes out of the drum we douse it with a half a percent of a paraffin oil paraffin oil is still a type of fossil fuel but recycling has lower overall emissions compared to making new product the paraffin helps rejuvenate old asphalt which degrades as it sits on roads it basically brings it back to life these mixes have to stay hot in order to spread onto roads smoothly so the clock is ticking asphalt has to be made and sold within 24 hours you can't leave it up there for too long the final product is temporarily stored in silos try to get three silos full of material so as trucks start to take it you're just running and keeping up with the trucks these aren't just any trucks though the trucks are designed where the exhaust from the truck runs through the body of the truck and that actually helps keep it warm green asphalt mixes will end up on roads all over New York City here in Queens workers are repaving two city blocks using 100 recycled asphalt it'll take 14 workers about 5 hours Anthony Rose has been in this business for a decade more and more companies are starting to use recycled asphalt but not fully recycled we are one of the few companies actually using 100 recycled these papers say it's no different to work with than conventional asphalt at the beginning of this job excavators tore old asphalt off the road it'll head back to green asphalt to start the process all over again the company sold its first 100 recycled product in 2011. convincing customers it would be as durable as new asphalt was a big hurdle we had to almost give stuff away for free everyone just has that old mindset like if it's not broken don't fix it the company runs quality tests every day to make sure each batch meets government standards which vary depending on its final use different things on Bridges different things for tunnels different things for airport runways things like that Matt Harrison runs those tests which include checking how much air and moisture is in each batch like a lot of people that don't use a lot of recycled material don't think it can be done because they don't process it the way we do you know like they don't test for all the little things that we do despite the extra steps green asphalt says it's fully recycled mix is the cheapest option our asphalt product here which is 100 recycled is actually 20 percent cheaper than our conventional Asphalt in fact one study found that the more you recycle the more costs fall mostly because you don't have to buy new rocks or binder to hold them together that helps explain why in countries like the US Japan and Finland more than 90 percent of old asphalt gets reused in New Roads but if it's cheaper why isn't fully recycled asphalt more popular for years asphalt producers and recyclers have fought a common enemy Blue Smoke it's a catch-all nickname for air pollution released while making asphalt some of these emissions can cause blood and liver problems the more recycled asphalt in a mix the more pollution you can get green asphalt says it's found a way to minimize that problem you have to find the right distance between the flame and the aggregate so you don't catch on fire but even then the process can create some blue smoke the company told us its filtration system catches it actually uses some water the idea is to clean up the emissions before they actually leave this smokestack blue smoke concerns are one reason many asphalt makers stick to about 30 percent recycled mixes older plants can't safely go above that without new equipment Jim says economic incentives also play a key role because many asphalt plant owners also own quarries they owned the stone or the oil supply that they're using in their products why would they want to recycle when they're using their own product and selling their own product we're trying to break that Trend we don't want to buy Stone we don't want to buy oil we want to make recycled asphalt even if the whole world did switch to recycled asphalt there'd still be some downsides the black pavement absorbs heat which is part of why cities are up to five degrees hotter than nearby areas Alternatives such as concrete create a lot more planet warming pollution but usually don't need to be replaced as often asphalt has stayed popular because it offers a smooth ride and its formula can be tweaked for different weather conditions since it's probably not going away anytime soon we might as well recycle as much as possible our mission is really for all asphalt to be green asphalt across the world if people think your dream is crazy then you must be doing something right when everyone said we couldn't do it made us want to do it even more

Channel: Business Insider

Views: 2,075,959

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, World Wide Waste, Asphalt, Recycled Asphalt, Pavement, Roads, Recycled Roads, Asphalt pavement, Asphalt Paving, Concrete, Asphalt Concrete, Recycle, Insider, New York, WWW

Id: fKunfiL_Kyc

Length: 9min 51sec (591 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 20 2022