화장실 휴지 재활용 도로 포장에 사용하는 네덜란드 The Netherlands Is Paving the Way in Toilet Paper Infrastructure

The Netherlands Is Paving the Way in Toilet Paper Infrastructure

A parking lot and stretch of highway made from recycled toilet paper help move a portion of the sludge out of the wastewater stream.

TIFFANY R. JANSEN  SEP 28, 2017

Turns out that, mixed with other ingredients, the cellulose from toilet paper looks and feels pretty much just like regular asphalt. KNN Cellulose

화장실 휴지를 재활용하여 도로 포장하는 네덜란드

화장실 휴지에서 추출된 셀룰로오스와 다른 성분들을 혼합하여 주차장이나 고속도로 등

포장 및 유지관리에 사용하고 있다.

사진에서와 같이 일반 아스팔트 재료와 별차이가 없다는 것을 알 수 있다

네덜란드에서 재활용 재료를 사용한 인프라 건설는 기본으로 되어 있다.

황기철 콘페이퍼 에디터 큐레이터

Ki Chul Hwang, conpaper editor, curator

Maintaining cycling infrastructure is a matter of course in the Netherlands, a country boasting 35,000 kilometers of bicycle paths. Still, the Dutch province of Friesland managed to make waves when it re-paved a bicycle highway last fall.

A 1-kilometer stretch of the bike roadway connecting the Frisian capital of Leeuwarden to the town of Stiens has the distinction of being the world’s first bicycle lane paved with toilet paper. Recycled toilet paper, that is.

Most roads in the Netherlands are paved with a blacktop called open-graded asphalt friction course (OGFC), which is porous and water permeable. Compared to more run-of-the-mill types of asphalt, OGFC requires higher volumes of bitumen, which binds together the stones and sand that make up the asphalt. Cellulose is added to thicken the mixture and prevent the bitumen from dripping off the aggregate during processing, transportation, and paving.

“When roads get wet, [they get] slippery, so we use this asphalt because it takes water away from the road surface quicker,” says Ernst Worrell, professor of energy, resources, and technological change at Utrecht University. Wicking water from the road is an important safety measure for a country that sees 27 to 35 inches of rainfall per year.

Meanwhile, the Dutch flush an estimated 180,000 tons of toilet paper annually. That paper makes its way to wastewater treatment plants, where it’s filtered out with the rest of the solids. The resulting sludge is dried and incinerated.

Aside from producing large amounts of CO2, the incineration process destroys many valuable resources found in wastewater, one of which is cellulose.

The bicycle path uses what’s called tertiary cellulose, extracted from waste streams, says Erik Pijlman, director at KNN Cellulose, one of the partners on the project. “We take the cellulose out of these streams and once again make it into a [raw material],” he says.

To do this, the paper fibers are sifted out of the wastewater by a 0.35 millimeter industrial sieve before proceeding through a series of machines to be cleaned, sterilized, bleached, and dried. The result is a fluffy, grayish material.

“If you look at it, you would not expect it to have originated from wastewater,” says Chris Reijken, wastewater treatment advisor at Waternet, one of 22 water authorities in the Netherlands, and part of the working group overseeing the project. “You can touch it, you can use it, it’s no problem.”

https://www.citylab.com/environment/2017/09/bike-path-recycled-toilet-paper-netherlands/541326/

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