Virgin Aggregates, Waste & Truck Deliveries Cut : VIDEO: New Road Recycling & Tech Cutting Landfill for UK Road Resurfacing
Equipment which allows road material to be recycled and reapplied during resurfacing is being used by Highways England’s contractor A-one+ for the first time on a motorway as it resurface around 2 miles of the carriageway on the A66(M).
Highways England said that the machinery, which has only been used previously on two sections of the A1 in Northumberland, and allows the underlying layers of the road to be recycled, churning up the old surface material, combining it with new material within the body of the machine then laying it back down immediately on the road behind.
In addition to being able to resurface larger areas, there was also said to typically be a 75% reduction in the amount of quarried stone used on the job, a 66% reduction in the amount of waste taken to landfill and there are 70% fewer lorry trips to and from site.
“There are lots of benefits to using this new way of working,” commented Highways England Project Manager Steve Bishop.
“It means we can resurface larger areas of road, there are fewer construction vehicle trips and the recycled material is designed to last for at least 10 years,” he continued
Bishop added that this is the first machine of its type in the UK but the process is already used in the US, France and China.
“Currently, to resurface a road, the old road surface is planed off and taken away on trucks as waste,” he explained. “The new material, which is often mixed off site, is brought in hot and is laid using a resurfacing machine.”
“This is usually in truckloads of 20 tonnes with an average of 350 tonnes per shift being brought in altogether, concluded Bishop.
A video explaining the process can be watched below.
