A red hot, green road ecopaver

Green Roads Recycling Ltd. has repaved most of the roads in B.C. —the environment and taxpayers say thank you

Green Roads Recycling uses this machine to heat the road's surface before a mixture is added and the road repaved. — Photo courtesy Shane Stothert

More than 20 years ago, Skip Stothert came to the realization that recycling roads was economically viable and environmentally friendly. He acquired RW Blacktop Ltd., now called Green Roads Recycling Ltd., and today the company has recycled enough asphalt to fill a line of dump trucks that would reach from the Canadian Pacific to the Atlantic.

Shane Stothert, Skip’s son and the general manager of Green Roads Recycling, said the company uses a hot-in-place asphalt-recycling process that starts by heating and softening the surface of the existing road. After that, 50 millimetres of asphalt can be removed and mixed with a rejuvenating agent and new asphalt if needed. The final step involves laying down the freshly mixed asphalt.

Based in Fernie, Green Roads Recycling has paved more than 11,500 kilometres of road across B.C. using this recycling method.

“Most of the roads in B.C. are recycled and now we are starting to recycle them again,” said Shane. “We bought the original prototype a year after it was developed and we have been doing about 150 to 200 kilometres a year.”

Shane said recycled roads typically last 13 to 15 years before the asphalt starts to wear and the recycling process is repeated. This technique, which has reused more than five million tonnes of asphalt since 1989, has saved B.C. taxpayers more than $172 million if you consider what would have been spent using the traditional paving process. And Shane said that Green Roads Recycling is designing new equipment that is expected to be 60 per cent more efficient than the current machinery due to regulating the temperature of the burners that heat the pavement.