Getting down to the nitty gritty: : Recycling minerals in road waste

The global mineral and mining sector is one of the key building blocks for human development and the supply of metal and mineral products has underpinned our endeavour through millennia, continuing to play a role in meeting society's needs. But with mineral extraction coming under closer environmental scrutiny as well as becoming ever more costly, recycling is gaining importance. Here, Peter Craven from CDEnviro, comments on how the millions of tonnes of sand and grit that are spread on our European roads during winter months is increasingly being recovered and recycled. Road sweepings and gully waste may not initially look like a viable source of recyclable material, however, in the UK alone over 2m tonnes of rock salt and valuable grit is destined to be spread onto the road networks over the coming months, at a cost of over Pounds 150m ($235m)**. It is also with regret that in the last 12 months over a million tonnes of road sweepings and gully waste went to UK landfill, at a cost of Pounds 80/tonne in landfill tax alone. *CDEnviro is the environmental recycling arm of CDE Global, world leaders in washing of waste materials and recycling. CDEnviro has developed technology to reclaim this valuable resource that can be reused in the gritting of the UK's winter roads or can be diverted to other areas of the construction industry as a high value material.