Washington State Uses Cool Recycling Method to Repave Highways

Every state's transportation department is given the tough task of making sure that its population has access to various transportation systems, such as highways, waterways and railroads. But the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) has gone a step further by implementing environmental preservation programs that not only ensure the safety of its travelers, but also the protection of the state's natural resources.

WSDOT has recently starting practicing a very eco-friendly alternative to traditional road paving. Instead of tearing up miles of roadways and damaging the surrounding environment, the department is only repaving the top 2 inches of their roadways and recycling the asphalt. It's called "hot-in-place-paving," and it's a trend that's catching on fire in Washington!

Hot-in-place paving uses a train of machinery that heats and softens already existing pavement.

Here's how it works:

• Crews remove the top 2 inches of asphalt on the pavement.
• This asphalt is mixed on site with a recycling agent and 20% new gravel and oil.
• The new recycled mixture is heated and then repaved over the road.

Besides reducing a ton of waste, this recycling pavement method also costs 1/3rd less than traditional methods, saving over $50,000 per lane per mile!

Here's a picture of the crew repaving the highway with the recycled asphalt:

You can read more about this story on the WSDOT Blog or check out the WSDOT Flickr page for more photos of the entire process.

I hope that this method is successful for Washington State and extends across the U.S. because I know of a few (hundred) roads in Baltimore that need to be repaved...