The city’s Department of Transportation will soon pave more roads with recycled asphalt.
Half of the asphalt mixed by DOT paving crews will consist of salvaged older roadway, the department announced Wednesday.
“Expanding the use of recycled road materials in our asphalt production will not only reduce costs, it will also reduce emissions,” Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez said in a statement. “It’s a win for us, a win for New Yorkers and a win for the planet.”
Before a road is repaved, work crews break up and remove the old asphalt. The pieces off the old road are then driven by truck to one of the city’s two asphalt plants, where they are broken down and mixed with fresh asphalt.
The department’s asphalt is already 40% recycled, a DOT spokesman told the Daily News. Moving to a semi-recycled mix could keep as much as 200 tons of material per day out of landfills, according to a department analysis.
It will also reduce costs, officials said, because the city will need to buy less crushed stone per mile paved.
City crews have already paved more than 6 lane miles of roadway in Brooklyn with the new mix and will monitor the durability of the roads, the DOT said in a statement.