Israel National Roads Company Ltd. Paved the road , using an experimental blend of asphalt and rubber pellets
Israel National Roads Company Ltd. has paved Israel's first eco-friendly road, using rubber to pave a 1.1-kilometer section of Road 85 east of the city of Carmiel.
Eco-friendly refers to an experimental blend of asphalt and rubber pellets from ground-up worn tires, used to pave the surface and increase its lifespan by one-third at no extra cost. The new eco-friendly road runs between Acre on the west and Amiad on the east in the Galilee.
Israel National Roads Company said in a press statement that if the experiment goes well, it will put the millions of tires discarded every year to good use instead of having them litter the countryside as they do now.
The asphalt (or asphaltic mixture in professional jargon) that covers the roads of Israel is composed of approximately 95% of natural crushed stone (called “aggregate” in professional jargon ) mined in quarries and about 5% of pitch (called “bitumen” in professional jargon )
The rubber-asphalt blend is a joint initiative of the Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Environmental Protection, and the Technion Israel Institute of Technology.
The cost of the raw material and the paving of the section is estimated at NIS 300,000, similar to the cost of regular road.
The National Roads Company noted in a press statement that 1,900 used tires were used to pave the new section, which has been defined by the National Roads Company as "experimental".
The rubber accounts for 3% of the asphalt blend, but the quantity of rubber could be doubled in future, which would result in the use of almost 4,000 used tires per kilometer of road.
Israel National Roads Company Ltd. is a governmental company that assumes responsibility for the entire interurban road network, planning and development of new roads, improvement of existing road maintenance, safety and traffic management and monitoring.
The company adopts innovative methods, according to the world's highest standards in the field of road maintenance, that include the creating of an efficient model for comprehensive maintenance and a plan for rehabilitation and maintenance of bridges. The company is positioned at the forefront of research and development, and works in close collaboration with leading research institutes in Israel and abroad.
