While developing new ways to utilize cleaner, greener energy is always welcome, it is equally important to find new ways to save up on petroleum – Which is exactly what 2 Michigan based construction companies are doing. They are melting down old asphalt shingles to be reused for the construction roadways. To clarify, Asphalt shingles are overlapping tiles used for roofing that contain large quantities of asphalt and fiberglass as their main materials of construction. Asphalt is principally a petroleum product and with asphalt shingles making up two-thirds of American residential roofing market so it’s easy to see why their reuse is essential.
The average house has 2000 sq ft of roofing which when purified will retain 5 tons of reusable asphalt which is equal to the amount got from 10 barrels of oil! And they recycle almost 26 tons per day! What with going rate of petroleum at roughly $130 per barrel, that’s approx $6760 per day! I’m really impressed with their efforts! Just goes to show how much difference recycling makes on the environment and on your wallet.
If you want to know more facts on shingle recycling, I suggest you look up this link(PDF).
via: The Home Crowd
Comments
Very attractive calculation Nithya... tempted to start this business myself Lol
Ha Ha i know! I can only imagine the money i’ll make off of this! However im not terribly sure Indian roofs use asphalt shingles. But with oil prices rising, there’s certainly a lot of money to be saved nevertheless.
Well, we are living in an age of globalization! If we don’t have such roof in India, US is not too far away :)
But on a serious note, its great that a green project is so much profitable. Will attract many enterprising guys who will make lot of money and in turn help recycle the old worn out roofs.
Not just roof’s, I’m sure a lot more can be recycled from the broken down and the decrepit. Instead of putting all our energy into developing the new and fancy, some part should be saved into improving existing processes. That’s how it should be.