The Israeli National Roads Company recently started to use construction waste in producing the asphalt used to pave the Jewish state’s roads.
Recently, 400,000 cubic meters of construction waste were used to pave the Ad Halom Junction near Ashdod, according to Globes business news. The waste came from the Hatzerot Jaffa waste facility, which had long posed an environmental hazard in the area. The waste was treated and sorted before use.
Israel’s construction industry produces about a million cubic meters of building waste each year, taking up a huge amount of landfill space. In 2007, Israel’s Environmental Ministry instituted charges for dumping in landfills to encourage recycling, but it has led to an increase in illegal dumping, particularly in Judea and Samaria.
The practice of recycling building waste for roads has been applied in several other countries as well, though Israel is seeking to expand the types of waste that can be used for that purpose. Trials are in progress using glass and other materials for paving roads. The glass is ground up into small particles, which researchers hope will act identical to the aggregate chunks currently used in pavement. If glass turns out to be usable, all of Israel’s glass can be recycled as part of the almost six million tons of asphalt produced each year.