The Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) has established a Recycling Task Force within its Subcommittee on Materials (SOM).
The mission of the Recycling Task Force is being defined as investigating which recycled products can work in the highway environment and to support the development and implementation of standards that facilitate the use of recycled materials.
The committee is made up of transportation officials from five states and two from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). “Our primary initiative is to find out what things are sound from both an engineering and environmental standpoint,” according to Gerald Malasheskie, chairman of the task force and chief of the Materials and Testing Division of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
Additionally, the committee will determine which states have experience with certain recycled materials, identify any needed research, and assess whether the TEA21-funded Recycled Materials Research Center (RMRC) at the University of New Hampshire is able to do the research or assist with standards development. “All of the above is aimed at heading us in a direction of developing appropriate standards and guidelines wherever they are needed,” says Malasheskie.
That goal was established at a Houston Conference on Recycled Materials, sponsored by FHWA, as was the consensus that “the biggest roadblock to widespread acceptance and use of recycled materials was having national standards,” he says. That is why the RMRC has been gathering data to help develop guidelines for the use of specific recycled materials in highways.
There is still some question whether RMRC will be funded in the next highway bill, jeopardizing the initiative the recycling task force has planned for it. Some recyclers have questioned whether state DOT officials support the use of recycled materials, citing numerous roadblocks they have faced in their respective bureaucracies.
Malasheskie believes there is support from AASHTO’s Subcommittee on Materials (which has a lot of influence with state DOT officials) for reauthorization of the RMRC. In order to establish the recycling task force, a resolution was put before the whole subcommittee and then voted on. “We had near unanimous support,” he says.