LinkUp Shingles in Paving Project

About the Program

Category: County Resiliency (Best in Category)

Year: 2011

King County, Washington is a renowned leader in the fields of waste management, recycling, and material recovery programs. Each year, however, some 40,000 tons of tear-off roofing shingles are generated in the County, with an overwhelming majority of this material going to landfills. The LinkUp Shingles in Paving Project is a collaborative effort to develop a local hot-mix asphalt (HMA) paving end-market for recycled asphalt shingles (RAS). The program identified asphalt shingles as a priority material for recycling for three chief reasons: (1) a large quantity of tear-off asphalt shingles generated in King County is disposed of in landfills; (2) local recycling infrastructure is not firmly established for tear-off asphalt shingles; and (3) tear-off asphalt shingles are successfully recycled in other parts of the country. LinkUp is geared primarily towards facilitating recycling infrastructure and expanding markets for selected recyclable and reusable materials by developing an interactive relationship between businesses community, public agencies, and other organizations. The program has led to increased awareness and engagement of important stakeholders, as well as direct engagement and a shift in thinking of key client audiences, including King County’s Road Services Division, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDoT), and the paving industry. As a testament to this success, there has been a recent development in the form of a public-private effort led by WSDoT and the Washington Asphalt paving Association to outline requirements for a paving trial project that would allow RAS in HMA on select state roads in 2011.