It’s ironic that whilst DCC is running the final consultation on its new Minerals Plan, a Plan that makes huge projections into the future and allocates millions of tonnes of aggregates across the County, "Highway contractors on the A1 in Northumberland have pioneered a new way of resurfacing roads that is 10 times quicker than traditional methods... and results in a 75% reduction in the amount of quarried stone used on the job".
The Wirtgen cold recycling machine is being used for the first time in the UK. It allows the underlying layers of the road to be recycled, churning up the old surface material, combining it with new material within the body of the machine then laying it back down immediately on the road behind.
More than five million square metres of thin layers are paved in cold application in Germany every year but this is the first time that the technique has been used in the UK.
There is also a 75% reduction in the amount of quarried stone used on the job, a 66% reduction in the amount of waste taken to landfill and there are 70% fewer lorry trips to and from site... [and is] between 33% and 50% cheaper than repaving with hot rolled asphalt.
