Colorado researchers say they’ve developed a material for paving recreation trails, providing large-scale recycling of rubber from automotive tires.
The material is designed to cushion the activities of joggers, walkers, and bicyclers. And it’s less expensive than other rubberized paving materials currently on the market.
Some 290 million scrap tires are generated in the United States annually, said Robert Amme, professor of physics and materials science at the University of Denver. Our motivation was to find new ways to recycle (the tires). This paving material appears to present a potentially major means of doing that. The process consumes rubber from about 6,000 to 7,000 tires per mile of trail.
Amme, his graduate student Haifeng Ni, and William Meggison of Meggison Enterprises in Brush, Colo., will report their research in October during the Asphalt Rubber 2006 Conference to be held in Palm Springs, Calif. It was previously presented during the 2005 Petersen Asphalt Research Conference in Laramie, Wyo.
Rubber block sidewalk
Poured rubber sidewalk
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