What follows is my January contribution to the Edmonton Examiner’s gracious ‘Councillor Connection‘ column space which rotates among us.

Since the Examiner is split run (there are, I believe, seven different versions, each localized to different parts of the city) people outside the South West would not see this. But I thought it might be of interest to readers of this blog, who seem to come from across the city.

This is my version; I haven’t compared it to what was published in the paper:

The news stories about the city with the greatest reverberation tend, unsurprisingly, to be about when things are going poorly. Sometimes this means citizens don’t hear about some of the successes we can all be proud of, though this newspaper is an excellent source of just that kind of news.

I wanted to share one such ‘good news’ story that I knew nothing about until this past year: the city’s Aggregate Recycling program. This is different from our very successful road sand recycling program, which has received a lot of good coverage and for which the city has been recognized with several awards.

The Aggregate Recycling program started with the city’s own supply of broken concrete and stripped asphalt more than thirty years ago. The thinking was that this waste material, rather then being landfilled as was the prevailing practice, could be crushed and sorted like gravel for use in city projects.

Our transportation department has tested the large aggregate in use and found the rough edges hold up better as a road bed then smoother river rock gravel of the sort normally used, meaning roads can last longer.

The City now processes more than 200,000 tonnes of concrete, soil cement, asphalt, gravel, bricks, paving stones and coarse sand annually. The city also accepts this material from citizens.

Of course it’s good to recycle, but the business case for this activity is very strong. In 2008 73,586 tonnes of waste were diverted from the landfill, saving $6.3 million in disposal costs; 187,449 tonnes of large aggregate was used in city construction projects, saving $3.8 million; 4,270 tonnes of smaller aggregate was used by roadway maintenance saving $320,000.

The total savings to the city were more than $10 million in 2008, and this value continues to grow.

Using recycled material also reduces the need to disturb land for quarrying in our region, which has a value too, though harder to quantify.

So next time you’re driving down a stretch of new or rebuilt road, remember it’s actually paved in part with good intentions – the kind that save public money and reduce our environmental impacts.

If you would like more information on public drop-off sites you can go to: tinyurl.com/aggregaterecycling