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What to do with street sweepings?
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Posted by
emmers_m 6 Northern NJ (
My Page) on
Wed, Jul 4, 12 at 9:02
| I've been avoiding this chore, so I'm going to wind up with a fairly substantial pile of street sweepings. They're all organics, so I don't feel right sending them to the landfill, but there's enough asphalt dust that I don't want to put them in the compost or dump them on the property...what to do?
~emmers |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: What to do with street sweepings?
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| On twitter I am seeing a lot of accounts from the New York Area that do composting. You have to belong to a club and pay money and they come take your compost away, but if toxic with sideway dust, I don't think they would want that as a donation. You could release it to the wild, I guess. |
RE: What to do with street sweepings?
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- Posted by corrine1 7b Pacific Northwest (My Page) on
Wed, Jul 4, 12 at 16:26
| What about under ornamental shrubs away from edibles? If you fear contamination then landfill they go. Not sure what else you could do. Would be crazy to offer up on freecycle or craigslist. |
RE: What to do with street sweepings?
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| The sidewalk dust could have lime in it, that could kill the plants even if they were only shrubs. |
RE: What to do with street sweepings?
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- Posted by pt03 2b Southern Manitob (My Page) on
Wed, Jul 4, 12 at 17:18
| I'm not familiar with the term asphalt dust, what is it? Lloyd |
RE: What to do with street sweepings?
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| I guess if is asphalt it would have tar and be black and clement dust would be white and have lime, so both are not great. Honesty, I think the trash is the way to go in this case. |
RE: What to do with street sweepings?
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While lead should not be as much of a problem in this material today, many other contaminanats probably are mixed in. As cars travel over our roads the tires they have on shed some material and they wear off some of the road surface, producing asphalt dust.
This then becomes the dilema, should we use this material or not. We breath it. |
RE: What to do with street sweepings?
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| I've seen this stuff at our city yard waste dropoff/mulch sites. I thought it was nice crumbly sandy soil at first, and then I realized it had a lot of tiny black bits in it. Asphalt is loaded with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which I prefer to keep out of my soil in general. |
RE: What to do with street sweepings?
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- Posted by pt03 2b Southern Manitob (My Page) on
Thu, Jul 5, 12 at 13:08
| Wow, if so much of the street is wearing off, how often do they re-pave? When they do spring clean up around here I see lots of sand mixed in but not asphalt. Interesting. Lloyd |
RE: What to do with street sweepings?
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| Lloyd, you reminded me of a key point in my situation: the city uses coal cinders on ice and snow in the winter. The spring street cleaning has a lot of black stuff in it which is mostly coal cinders rather than asphalt. That's probably not the practice in most places. I still don't put it in my yard because the cinders tend to have elevated metals in them that are concentrated from the original coal. |
RE: What to do with street sweepings?
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- Posted by pt03 2b Southern Manitob (My Page) on
Thu, Jul 5, 12 at 17:57
| Our asphalt around here uses crushed limestone as its base, I wonder what other jurisdictions use and if that makes any difference. I would think if there is that much asphalt dust, every time it rained the water would be black. Lloyd |
RE: What to do with street sweepings?
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| I heard about a lady who had her roses in front of the house die. She planted them, but the salt they used on the road in front caused a toxic sodium level for the roses. Probably she can plant some salt loving plants, but they won't be as pretty as roses. |
RE: What to do with street sweepings?
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When the pavers lay down a road they start with a coarse stone base that helps provide drainage and on top of that they lay a "base coat" of asphalt. When they have built this road up as specified they then lay on a "wear coat", a fairly thin layer of asphalt meant to wear away over time. As this layer wears away dust is generated. This dust may be small enough particles that the normal human eye does not see it, but it is there.
That sodium chloride, the salt used to melt ice on roads, is toxic to plants has been known for many years, longer then i have been around. |
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