The latest article from Michigan Environment highlights an Ingham County road construction project using scrap tyres.
The road construction crew call it ‘road lasagna’ – roads that are made with scrap tyres and other construction materials that are layered like sheets of pasta in the Italian dish. The construction method has been used for many years using different construction materials, but using scrap tyres in the layers is getting more common in Michigan thanks to grants from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE).
In 2021, EGLE awarded an $80,000 match grant to Ingham County to build some 325 linear feet of road on top of a scrap tyre base near Onondaga.
That section of Belleview Road in Ingham County is in a wet area and had been sinking. It was rebuilt using the “road lasagna” stacking method. It is now complete and showing positive results, says Kirsten Clemens, EGLE’s scrap tyre coordinator.
“The project involved the crew removing over 30 inches of old asphalt from that segment of road,” noted Clemens. “Previous ‘fixes’ were to add a layer of asphalt when the road got low, which just caused it to sink faster.”
Describing the construction in 2022, Clemens noted: “The scrap truck tyre ‘rings’ were prepared with the sidewalls cut out. They were placed touching in two rows in the bottom of the trench and filled with aggregate. A layer of aggregate is put over top, then a layer of tyre derived aggregate (TDA) and a layer of geotextile fabric. This process was repeated three times, and the surface was prepared and paved.”
In all, the project used approximately 30,000 scrap tyres.
Other Michigan roads projects using scrap tyres in tyre derived aggregate (TDA) construction projects include Eastman Road in Midland County and an upcoming project with the Ingham County Road Commission.
EGLE’s scrap tyre programme is responsible for overseeing the handling of scrap tyres generated in Michigan, cleaning up existing scrap tyre piles of 500 or more tyres, and expanding the reuse and recycling of scrap tyres.
Source: Michigan Environment
