In 1989, in the face of a dwindling supply of aggregate and a rising cost of oil, Skip Stothert realized that recycling roads was not only becoming more economical, it was becoming an environmental necessity. So he acquired RW Blacktop Ltd., now called Green Roads Recycling^® Ltd., a hot-in-place asphalt recycling company. 

In the 20 years that followed, this family-owned and operated company successfully paved more than ~11,550 kilometres of road. In fact, if you’ve driven anywhere in British Columbia, Canada, you’ve probably driven on a Green Roads Recycling® road at some point. Eleven thousand kilometres of road!? Let’s break that down some. That’s about 5 million tonnes of recycled asphalt, which is about 250,000 tonnes of oil and ~4.75 million tonnes of aggregate. If that oil was new -- as it is with conventional re-paving techniques -- it would cost as much as $125 million (based on 2007 prices). And the aggregate would cost as much as $47.5 million. That’s a savings of about $172 million close to a quarter billion dollars.

Here’s another way to think about it: If you put all that recycled aggregate into 50-foot tandem dump trucks and lined them up bumper-to-bumper, the first truck would have it’s back-end in the Pacific ocean, the last truck would have it’s grill in the Atlantic. This shows not only that the hot-in-place technology is tested and proven, but so too is the company. And with oil and aggregate getting scarcer and more expensive, the company sees itself poised for another 20 years of good road work that’s also good for the environment.