Pushing recycling in the highway sector.

For those of you who liked the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, you will love the Green Highways Initiative, especially if you want to sell recycled products into the highway environment.

The initiative has been conceived and initially organized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with enthusiastic financial and logistical support from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). It will be a voluntary certification program designed to promote environmentally friendly practices in highway construction and renovation through collaboration between the public and private sectors. As that includes the use of recycled materials, the Construction Materials Recycling Association (CMRA) and some other recycled products associations were invited to participate in the recent planning meeting in Philadelphia on the development of the certification program.

The room was filled mostly with government officials from the FHWA, EPA, or state departments of transportation and environmental protection, as well as a smattering of trade association representatives such as myself. Included in the latter group, besides the CMRA, were representatives for coal ash, recycled tires, concrete paving and the Associated General Contractors (AGC). Much of the discussion centered on how to set up a certification program, what should be included, and what the barriers should be.

Recycled materials were just a small part of the equation because wetlands mitigation, storm water drainage, and similar issues were additional topics of discussion. But the FHWA and the EPA people were very much in favor of including recycled materials as part of the program, perhaps making it a requirement to use them in order to qualify for the certification. It is for this reason that the CMRA recommends that all C&D recyclers support the EPA's Green Highways Initiative every chance they get. The CMRA will continue to participate in the program development to the highest degree possible.

That should be a good thing, if the comments heard during a session-ending group discussion are any indication. All the representatives for recycled materials said the same thing: that the biggest barriers to be faced by the program will be put up by the state DOTs, something just about any concrete recycler in this country would understand.

Those agencies have consistently thwarted attempts to incorporate even recycled concrete into highway jobs, saying the material is substandard, although the research and anecdotal evidence says otherwise. Other excellent candidates, such as asphalt shingles in hot-mix asphalt and wood mulches for erosion control and landscape growth, also face scrutiny or outright rejection. This program could provide their opportunity.

But there may be another roadblock. A major participant at this planning meeting was the AGC. One of the comments from a representative of that huge and influential association was the observation that recycled materials were suspect because of "quality issues." Now if this is the viewpoint of the industry that will have to incorporate the materials into their work, recyclers have a lot of educating to do, for such an opinion must be assigned to ignorance. It would be scary to consider there would be other reasons for that viewpoint on the part of the general contractors.

The bottom line remains that the Green Highways Initiative could prove to be a valuable public/private collaboration that will promote the use of recycled materials in the highway sector. Let's hope politics and ignorance don't ruin that chance. Support the EPA and FHWA in this effort.