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In America, the Streets are Paved With Trash

 Mix various types of trash with concrete or asphalt to build roads.
 
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According to ASCE's Report for American Infrastructure, nearly a quarter of the paved roads in the United States are in poor or mediocre condition. This is due in part to the high cost of maintaining the surfaces of these roads. What I propose is to sort out structurally viable types of trash and mix them with suitable roadbuilding materials (concrete or asphalt), diluting it and thereby offsetting the cost somewhat. Materials harmful to the environment would obviously not be used.
—miamigrandprix, Oct 24 2003

Asphalt Quality http://www.asi-road...blem/theProblem.asp
"Asphalt is not as good as it used to be" [Laughs Last, Oct 04 2004]

Recycled Tire Asphalt http://www.rubberpa..._study/history.html
A brief history of it. [Laughs Last, Oct 04 2004]

15 Ways to Sprinkle Rubber Chips http://www.americanrubber.com/
[Laughs Last, Oct 04 2004]

Recycled blue sherry bottles http://www.telegrap.../03/19/bablue19.xml
[alligator_al, Oct 04 2004]


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Annotation:







       It is already baked to use discarded tires in this fashion.
—krelnik, Oct 24 2003
   

       You can use anything you want for aggregate provided that it is inert and broken up into sufficiently small, clean, relatively uniform bits. I’m not sure what inert stuff is in your trash.   

       Rubber and old concrete are already widely used for this in recycled form.   

       Glass and plastic are probably more economical if recycled into them selves, but could be used as aggregate if thoroughly washed, chopped, and sorted. Glass does look very good in polished terrazzo, but then, that isn’t a road pavement.   

       Simply using lower quality materials for your pavement is more likely to increase the maintenance costs due to quicker failure.
—Laughs Last, Oct 24 2003
   

       [Laughs Last], Thinking about your comment, I suppose it would be better used as a temporary solution or to fix some potholes.
—miamigrandprix, Oct 24 2003
   

       Technically, ashphalt kind of IS garbage. It's the crap that's left over when you process crude oil into useful forms. So...popsicle. Yeah.
—Overpanic, Oct 25 2003
   

       Baked in my country. Only here the trash is just a layer, unattached to the pavement yet constant.
—Pericles, Oct 26 2003
   

       It's baked on some pavements used, for instance, in playgrounds. That brown-red, shock-absorving thick stuff they pave the playgrounds with nowadays is made of recycled stuff (don't know what, though). Not really asphalt, but is the same concept.
—PauloSargaco, Oct 28 2003
   

       Is this the same stuff they make the 400m track out of? It is also usually red.
—Zimmy, Oct 29 2003
   

       I read something once about how Nike used recycled sneakers to make running tracks for schools. But I'm not motivated enough to find a link right now.
—Overpanic, Nov 01 2003
   

       Actually, a law was passed in 1991 (the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act - ISTEA - section 1038), requiring that, starting in 1994, 5 % of roads built with federal funds must use pavement made with crumb rubber, processed recycled tires, or modified asphalt. By 1997, 20 % of roads built with federal funds were required to use recycled tires in the pavement.
—g474747, Aug 12 2004
   


 

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