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Editor's Notes
Recycling
Makes Sense
Today, it seems as if almost
everything can be recycled - from household items, such as glass, tin cans,
and plastic bottles, to automobile tires and other car parts, electric appliances,
and the bands and brackets used by orthodontists.
For thousands of years,
man has been making useful products from old things, from waste materials, and
from virtually every part of certain animals and plants. For example, about
2,000 years ago, the Chinese used lime-treated bones to fertilize their soil
to improve the growth of crops.
However, in recent times,
some environmentalists have been critical of our "consume and throwaway"
society. Now, the scarcity of some natural resources, the immense problems of
trash and waste disposal, and related economic issues have rekindled our awareness
of the need to be innovative and efficient in our use and reuse of available
resources and materials.
Here are some interesting
facts about trash and recycling (compiled by Draw Enterprises Inc. at www.recyclingit.com):
- In a lifetime, the average
American will throw away more than 90,000 pounds (41,000 kilograms) of trash.
- Americans throw away
enough aluminum every three months to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.
- Annually, enough energy
is saved by recycling steel to supply Los Angeles with electricity for almost
10 years.
- Twenty cans can be made
from recycled material using the same amount of energy it takes to make one
new can.
- In this decade, it is
estimated that Americans will throw away more than 1 million tons (0.91 million
metric tons) of aluminum cans and foil, more than 11 million tons (almost
10 million metric tons) of glass bottles and jars, more than 4.5 million tons
(4.1 million metric tons) of office paper, and nearly 10 million tons (9.1
million metric tons) of newspaper. Almost all of this material could be recycled.
- Incinerating 10,000 tons
(9,070 metric tons) of waste creates one job; putting the same amount in a
landfill creates six jobs; recycling the same amount creates 36 jobs.
Recycling is good for the
environment and the preservation of limited virgin resources. It is also good
for the economy. And that is becoming more and more true in the field of highway
construction as well.
Five articles in this issue
cover various aspects of highway-related recycling: national research projects,
operations and research of the Recycled Materials Resource Center to determine
additional and better ways to use recycled materials, the cultural benefits
of recycling in North Carolina, lessons learned in Texas, and the scanning tour
to discover why and how the Europeans are so successful in using recycled materials
in highway construction.
These articles update Robing
L. Schroeder's comprehensive recycling article,"The Use of Recycled Materials
in Highway Construction," which was published in the Autumn 1994 issue
of Public Roads. This article can be accessed in the Public Roads archives on
the Web site of the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center (www.tfhrc.gov).
Also, the article about
geosynthetic reinforced soil structures - while not specifically about recycling
- covers the innovative and economical use of readily available materials in
highway related construction.
The highway construction
industry can effectively use large quantities of diverse materials - including
blast furnace and steel slags; carpet fibers; coal ash byproducts, such as fly
ash and bottom ash; glass; municipal solid waste combustion ash; recycled plastic;
roofing shingle waste; and rubber tires. The use of these materials can relieve
a great burden associated with waste product disposal and can potentially save
a great deal of money.
Recycling in the highway
construction industry just makes good sense!
Bob Bryant
Editor
Articles & Departments
Nat. Research Projects on Recycling in Highway Construction
The Recycled Materials Resource Center
TxDOT's Efforts to Increase Use of Recycled Materials
How NCDOT is Building a Recycling Culture
National Transportation Week
Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil Structures
Scanning Europe: Recycled Materials in Highway Construction
Managing Change in FHWA
Highways and Bridges on the Brink of the New Century
The National IVI Meeting
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