What is sustainable management?

What sustainable management activities are being used in business?

• Can anyone give me a list?

• Answer:

  here are many innovative projects across Europe and the UK where new materials and techniques are being used to deliver sustainable roads, reports Alan Mackenzie, director of the Asphalt Industry Alliance The asphalt industry is operating today in a much different environment than it was even as recently as two years ago. And environment is the key word. The need to find more sustainable solutions is encouraging customers to look at new materials and techniques that previously they would not even have considered. The move away from a dogmatic rejection of any material not already proven to have lasted for 20 years is not just welcome for the industry, but gives both customer and supplier alike, an opportunity to benefit in environmental and financial terms. The last two or three decades have seen the development of so many new products that customers are now able almost simply to specify the benefits they require from these materials, rather than having to define their detailed specification. Mixes such as porous and double layer porous asphalt, stone mastic asphalt, ultra thin asphalts and asphalt concrete, provide a wide choice of solutions to client requirements for noise reduction, enhanced durability, higher skid-resistance, or surface drainage to name only the most obvious benefits available. Yet progress continues and across Europe there are some really innovative projects which, although still at testing stage, indicate very exciting possibilities for the future. New ways to pave Most new materials have been developed with the dual need for more sustainable products and to reduce the amount of time that roads are closed for maintenance or repair. High quality and more durable surfaces make longer life pavements realisable while reducing the need for carriageway possession and allowing faster resurfacing times. New ways of paving are also helping the process. In the Netherlands, for example, the concept of “asphalt-on-a-roll” – a pre-fabricated layer of porous asphalt using a special bond layer activated by induction – emerged some years ago. This is currently being tested on a motorway service area so its routine use on roads is on a not too far horizon. The test section material incorporates re-used tyres, the resulting “poro-elastic” surface significantly contributing to the abatement of vibration and therefore traffic noise of up to 10db(A). It may also help to decrease vehicle rolling resistance and thus contribute to the reduction of emissions. Another innovation is that of “compact asphalt” a technique developed in Germany which enables two layers of asphalt to be laid simultaneously by one paving machine which applies a thin top layer onto a thicker binder layer, creating a perfect bond. As compact asphalt employs the use of a much thinner surface layer, it reduces the amount, and therefore the cost, of the highway quality aggregate content. More sophisticated hardware also plays a role in achieving longer-life roads. Intelligent compaction is a technique that employs electronic equipment on the paver roller to deliver instant information about the compaction achieved along the length of the laid material. The resulting more uniform compaction improves durability. Energy producing pavements Not surprisingly, energy reduction is top of the agenda. In the Netherlands, the excellent heat-absorbing properties provided by asphalt’s dark colour, are being used to store and retrieve energy. There are several techniques but all are based on the principle of running water through the warm pavement surface in the summer and storing it underground for heating buildings in the winter. The warmer water returned from buildings to the pavement during winter also helps reduce maintenance activities necessitated by icy weather. On the other hand, several techniques have been developed to lower asphalt production and application temperatures, resulting in significant reductions in mixing temperatures by as much as 300C. In addition to much smaller carbon footprints, these Warm Mix Asphalts (WMAs) have several other advantages, such as reducing the wear and tear of the plant used in their production and enabling newly surfaced roads to be opened earlier to traffic. In the UK, a number of innovative longer-life asphalts are already being put to use. A cold mix used on a project in Northamptonshire combines recycled road planings with an emulsion bitumen binder designed for cold production. The process reduces the energy consumption required by hot-mix asphalt by 99 per cent. Alan Mackenzie is a Director of the Asphalt Industry Alliance and President of the European Asphalt Pavement Association.