Hampshire Highway’s new purpose-built recycling facility at Micheldever, which can process and re-use material used in road repairs, is up and running - reducing carbon emissions, costs, and travel miles.
Councillor Rob Humby, Deputy Leader and Executive Member for Economy, Transport and Environment at Hampshire County Council, said: “This is a huge advance in how highways maintenance is carried out across the county - one of the largest areas of work the County Council delivers for Hampshire residents and businesses.
“Hampshire County Council has made a commitment to focus on the climate change impact of everything we do, and we now have a dedicated facility operating which recycles material for re-use in road repairs – bringing back material taken up from Hampshire roads during repair, processing it cleanly and quietly, and then re-using it elsewhere on the local road network. With around 5,500 miles of roads to maintain across Hampshire this will make a significant contribution to reducing our carbon footprint, leading the way in sustainable construction.”
The recycled material is laid cold which means specialist insulated lorries are not needed to collect and deliver the material, and there is no waste from unused material. The cold recycled road surface uses a fifth of the energy of traditional materials and saves 40 per cent CO2 emissions.
Within 12 months, the Micheldever facility aims to deliver a net reduction in CO2 of around 67,500kg by reducing use of virgin aggregates, replacing some warm and hot mixes with cold lay materials and reducing the total miles travelled for highway construction. The new facility will reduce construction costs by recycling tar bound material which would otherwise require specialist disposal, and we plan to operate it commercially, enabling and encouraging more sustainable construction in wider highway activities across Hampshire.