Recycled Asphalt: Paving the Way Towards a Greener City & Future During the Month of May
Peckham Materials Corp. (a subsidiary of Peckham Industries, Inc.) has partnered with the City of Yonkers to pave a portion of Kimball Avenue between Yonkers Avenue to Hildreth Place in Yonkers, NY with a hot mix asphalt (HMA) mix design consisting of 40% Recycled Asphalt Pavement (RAP)- a percentage that is unique to this area. Using 40% RAP is double the typical percentage of RAP currently used in typical paving projects. This unique material was produced at Peckham Materials Corp’s Bronx, NY hot mix asphalt plant and created using Cargill rejuvenator products. This unique hot mix asphalt product will undergo performance testing and monitoring by Peckham and the NYSDOT and will be analyzed for its resistance to rutting and cracking before being used in future projects within the city and around New York State. Below are photos from Peckham’s quality control lab, performing various tests on this mix design.
Rejuvenator products live up to their name by chemically rejuvenating the existing asphalt contained in the RAP (therefore allowing it to be reused) and improves the performance of the mix, all of which provides an economic benefit in asphalt paving. During the paving process, this mix was easier to handle for the paving crew employees and behaved similarly to traditional virgin mixes, thus speeding up the project’s process.
This proactive work is a small portion of Peckham Industries’ initiative and responsibility to create a more sustainable environment for our current and future generations. Asphalt is America’s most recycled product, according to the National Asphalt Pavement Association. For each ton of recycled hot mix, 1 ton of stone does not have to be mined and 13 gallons of asphalt does not have to be produced. Because of this, increasing the percentage of RAP in hot mix asphalt mix designs has significant environmental and financial benefits. Peckham Industries is a proponent of recycling asphalt whenever and wherever possible in its road and highway paving activities. Re-using existing materials is environmentally conscious: trucking costs, fuel use, and the use of new materials are greatly reduced. Thus, also reducing overall costs associated with the entire road construction process. In 2019, 90 million tons of recycled materials were used in asphalt pavement, saving more than $3.3 billion compared to the use of virgin materials. (Source: https://www.asphaltpavement.org/uploads/documents/NAPAFastFactsNovember2020FINAL.pdf) To learn more about Peckham Industries’ commitment to environmental stewardship and our sustainability practices, click here.
The Peckham team is excited to be a part of this project and looks forward to working with the NYS Dept. of Transportation and other agencies in developing future Hot Mix Asphalt standards using higher RAP percentages.
