SAVING THE EARTH...
...One Shingle at a Time.
More than 276 million pounds of roofing shingles are dumped into New Jersey and Pennsylvania landfills every year. That’s enough shingles to completely cover St. Louis City and St. Louis County. Now imagine how much land that covers over a period of five years—or 10 years. Or even 25 years.
Simply put, demolition tear-off roofing shingles represent a tremendous burden on our landfills. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Discarded roofing shingles represent an incredible opportunity to turn construction waste into a renewable resource as an asphalt base or hot mix additive for paving. What’s more, using roofing shingles as part of the paving process not only frees up landfill space, it makes the paving end-product better.
Turning roofs into roads is recycling at its finest!
ROOFS TO ROADS: THE USES OF RECYCLED SHINGLES
Asphalt roofing shingles are extremely versatile and can be recycled in several ways. They can be:
- Added into hot mix asphalt for use in paving permanent roads.
Mixed with aggregate to form a base under new roads.
- Used as road patch repair.
Applied to temporary, rural or gravel roads, parking lots, driveways, construction sites, farm lanes, paths and trails for dust and noise control.
A SOUND PAVEMENT SOLUTION, THAT HAPPENS TO BE ENVIRONMENTALLY SOUND, TOO
Everyone understands the environmental benefits of recycling. Still, the challenge with many recycling efforts is weighing a compromised end product against the environmental benefits. That problem does exist with the recycling of demolition shingles.
Because the shingles we recycle are made of asphalt, the product we recycle is easily converted into paving materials that actually improve the end product.
When recycled roofing shingles are used in paving solutions, here are just a few of the performance benefits you can expect:
- Increases the life of pavement.
Reduces fatigue cracking.
- Increased pavement resistance to wear and moisture.
Decreased susceptibility to rutting in asphalt roads.
- Improved control of dust and noise on unpaved and secondary roads.
- When the process reaches a basic level of use, recycled shingles will represent a more economical option, as well.
Moreover, in addition to the performance benefits of using recycle shingles, the environmental benefits are also impressive. The use of roofing shingles:
- Reduces our dependence on virgin liquid asphalt & new aggregate.
- Allows us to recover and reuse liquid asphalt, aggregate and fiber content in
- recycled shingles, rather than bury these natural resources in our landfills.
Finally, using recycled shingles also creates jobs right here in Missouri. Now that’s an environmentally sound solution that sounds great all-around!
Best Home Solutions is a green company